I can't find it but there's a $10k prize around for anyone able to recover data from a drive overwritten once with all zeros.
Use something like DBAN [1] and forget about it.
(Happy to be corrected)
[1]: http://www.dban.org/
Use something like DBAN [1] and forget about it.
(Happy to be corrected)
[1]: http://www.dban.org/
1. Secure Erase will only take a few seconds.
2. DBAN is going to shorten the life of the drive.
3. Yes, recovering data that has been overwritten is unlikely. However, DBAN is likely to not write over the data in the first place. It has no control over where the data is written. That's handled by the SSD controller. DBAN will only think it wrote zeros over the entire drive, while not actually doing so.
for ATA disk drives manufactured after 2001
(over 15 GB) clearing by overwriting the media once is adequate to protect the media from
both keyboard and laboratory attack.
Found that while looking up the DoD standard, interesting stuff - thanks!
There was one study a long time ago where a few bits were recovered with some accuracy with an electron microscope, but it was from a really old hard drive with a much lower density than current ones.
Those overwriting regulations are just in case such technology might get invented in the future.