secure erase caused ssd to become undetectable

eladril · May 6, 2016

Hello. I decided I wanted to do a secure erase on my ssd for the first time. To do this I used crucial's own utility with the option 'sanitize drive'. It required unmounting an active partition, which I foolishly did, while still in the OS. Utility halted shortly after started, with an error (i dont remember at the moment what it was). After restarting pc, ssd was no longer seen in the bios.

I tried quite a few solutions I found, including power cycling a couple times using different methods, and leaving ssd ON (on power cable alone) overnight. This caused parted magic to be able to detected it again (it went from not found, to unknown device, to now showing correct device in the Disk Health utility).

I figured, I started the secure erase function that never finished (it barely started, if at all), so it has to end now right.. well parted magic's erase disk utility can't do it, it says failed. HDPARM log doesn't say much but device is not locked, frozen, or disabled.

There are quite a few other utilities out there but im starting to venture into a more risky teritory, using tools not approved, outdated etc.. there's hdd erase and some other ones. Actually if it's a windows tool it probably won't see the drive anyway.

I just finished doing a normal wipe using erase disk tool in parted magic, took 3 hours (overwriting with 'dd'). Same as before

What else can I try. I never thought anything would pick up on the disk of BIOS would not see it, but turns out it's possible. I don't know if it means the drive isn't beyond saving yet

specs
CRUCIAL M500, latest firmware
previously installed OS: win7 HP 64bit
motherboard - b75ma-e33 (pretty ****ty one).

billbartuska · May 6, 2016

https://giant.gfycat.com/UnhealthyRemoteAxolotl.gif

Never, ever secure erase an SSD, but you know that now.
Secure erase removes the last traces on magnetism from spinner drives. SSds don't use magnetism to store data, they use flash memory (like a thumb drive).

Secure erase works by writing ones and zeros to the drive many many times, substituting ones for zeros on each pass thereby reducing (eliminating for all practical purposes) any residual magnetism left from any data previously stored on the drive.

When run on an SSD this just causes massive, excess reads and writes and reduces the lifespan of the flash memory ICs.

Since your SSD now has no partition information on it (just all ones and zeeros) you have to format it You can use partition magic, Windows Disk Management, or whatever you want.

eladril · May 6, 2016

Yeah well, i probably got a little bit too much used to computers preventing me from doing stupid **** when I was about to, with dozen warning messages. There were none in this case. Seriously though, what now???

billbartuska · May 6, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by eladril

Yeah well, i probably got a little bit too much used to computers preventing me from doing stupid **** when I was about to, with dozen warning messages. There were none in this case. Seriously though, what now???

Format it - then check it's health.

eladril · May 6, 2016

GParted in parted magic just throws up errors, I will try to get around it though, i didnt actually try to format it yet I just I assumed it wont do anything since drive does not show up in bios.

About what you wrote - I disagree. Im sure you know much more than I ever will will about this topic, but that's not what I read.. there are many procedures posted, there's even a popular search in google that leads to an article in this section, which describes it as well.

When all works well I avoid this kind of thing, but, at the same time I just discovered this was possible and that it can possiblity restore the drive to it's original perfromance (maybe that was the case way back with first ssds, i dont know).

When you say my SSD has no information on it, I assume you refer to the procedure of overwriting with 'dd' (whatever it's called); I thought too if it run successfully then the drive's gotta be accessible still somehow, right

billbartuska · May 6, 2016

If the drive doesn't show up in you BIOS you have to fix that first.
Try a different SATA port.
Replace the cables.
Check Windows Device Manager for problems. If you can't boot, install another drive and install an OS (Windows?) on it.

You could also try booting:
Gparted
Bootable Partition Magic
Bootable EasyBCD

You have to get some kind of OS booted so that you can mount and format the drive again.

eladril · May 6, 2016

No, all that stuff failed. I do have something to report though

Crucial's Manual Boot File (bootable firmware flasher) sees the drive correctly. I wanted to do a reflash, but there are no options it just says it has the latest version
If I hotplug, or replug the sata connector when in windows (on another hdd), it will find and install the driver and say device is ready to use - but diskpark won't detect any volumes (well.. there very well may be none), and shortly after, maybe 2 minutes later, it wont show up in device manager anymore (and the already active device window will say error 56 device not found..).

So I'm trying to get either of those 2 things to work right now, maybe somebody has an idea

I know hotplugging sata is already questionable, but completely plugging in both power and connector while in use is complete no-go, right

djsi38t · May 6, 2016

The ata secure erase command instructs the drive to apply a voltage spike in unison to all nand.

This effectively returns the drive to a new state,like resetting it without writing anything to the drive.It takes about a second to perform.

It has been recommended for years as far as I know,as an effective way to return a drive to it's original state.

I know not any help but I would think that parted magic wold be the utility to help you.

eladril · May 6, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by djsi38t

The ata secure erase command instructs the drive to apply a voltage spike in unison to all nand.

This effectively returns the drive to a new state,like resetting it without writing anything to the drive.It takes about a second to perform.

It has been recommended for years as far as I know,as an effective way to return a drive to it's original state.

i'm glad someone back up my layman's opinion, if only you knew how to fix the drive too

djsi38t · May 6, 2016

There is a program in most linux distros called g parted that I think would help you.

I only have limited experience with it but I am sure there is many people here who should be able to help you with this one.

eladril · May 6, 2016

Yeah maybe some people saw this thread and figured not much can be done, which is what I'm leaning towards right now. I can actually see the drive in windows, that is, until absolutely nothing is done to it - just interacting, activating it in any way will cause the drive to remove/unplug itself and needs to restart to be seen again. I/o errors in every utility. I wish I had known a dedicated software was capable of such destruction beforehand

Flashing failed - no idea why, maybe because I can only flash an earlier version and the flasher sees it and prevents it, or, it attempts to flash it and drive disconnects (it's his new favorite thing to do, after all..);

How the heck is it that I can still wipe/overfill it and it completes without errors is beyond me.. because all other procedures cause immediate freeze.

billbartuska · May 7, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by eladril

How the heck is it that I can still wipe/overfill it and it completes without errors is beyond me.. because all other procedures cause immediate freeze.

Those procedures don't require a formatted drive for them to work.

Can you try the drive in another computer? Format it there?

GeneO · May 7, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by billbartuska

https://giant.gfycat.com/UnhealthyRemoteAxolotl.gif

Never, ever secure erase an SSD, but you know that now.
Secure erase removes the last traces on magnetism from spinner drives. SSds don't use magnetism to store data, they use flash memory (like a thumb drive).

Secure erase works by writing ones and zeros to the drive many many times, substituting ones for zeros on each pass thereby reducing (eliminating for all practical purposes) any residual magnetism left from any data previously stored on the drive.
.

That's not the way it works on an SSD. Secure erase on an SSD resets all of the NAND cells state to "1" at once. The drive does this by applying a voltage to all NAND simultaneously. Using the erase disk was not a good idea for an SSD though.

So can you see the unformatted drive in windows This PC -> manage -> disk management?

It wasn't encrypted was it?

billbartuska · May 7, 2016

I didn't say that's the way it works on an SSD, only a spinner drive.

GeneO · May 7, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by billbartuska

I didn't say that's the way it works on an SSD, only a spinner drive.

Yes you did.
Quote:

Secure erase works by writing ones and zeros to the drive many many times, substituting ones for zeros on each pass thereby reducing (eliminating for all practical purposes) any residual magnetism left from any data previously stored on the drive.

When run on an SSD this just causes massive, excess reads and writes and reduces the lifespan of the flash memory ICs.

ssateneth · May 7, 2016

For the future, secure erase only applies to mechanical hard drives. For SSDs, just delete existing partitions, create new partition, and quick format it. TRIM will do the rest. I had an XP941 M.2 SSD and wanted to sell it but it had lots of personal data on it. I used a hex viewer to view the contents of the drive in multiple places to ensure there was data there, did the above, waited about 10 minutes, then checked again with hex viewer in the same places, and it was completely zero'd out from TRIM.

If you secure erase an SSD, whats probably happening is you are also secure erasing the drive's firmware since it's probably stored in the same NAND cells, hence it gets bricked/messed up.

If your drive is messed up that badly, well you don't have any data left (data recovery of that nature is EXTREMELY expensive), just RMA it.

GeneO · May 7, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by ssateneth

For the future, secure erase only applies to mechanical hard drives. For SSDs, just delete existing partitions, create new partition, and quick format it. TRIM will do the rest. I had an XP941 M.2 SSD and wanted to sell it but it had lots of personal data on it. I used a hex viewer to view the contents of the drive in multiple places to ensure there was data there, did the above, waited about 10 minutes, then checked again with hex viewer in the same places, and it was completely zero'd out from TRIM.

If you secure erase an SSD, whats probably happening is you are also secure erasing the drive's firmware since it's probably stored in the same NAND cells, hence it gets bricked/messed up.

No it does not only apply to mechanical drives, Secure erase programs send the ATA secure erase command and SSD take advantage of it by erasing all blocks..

What you are suggesting will NOT securely delete your data. Because there is no one-to-one mapping of OS LBA to data on the SSD, just deleting your data and issuing TRIM will not erase all of your data. The SSD will just mark the TRIMMED blocks as reusable, it will not erase them. If you want to make sure all of your data on the SSD is erased, you have to use secure erase. Secure erase erases all blocks in the SSD>

billbartuska · May 7, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeneO

Quote:

Originally Posted by billbartuska

I didn't say that's the way it works on an SSD, only a spinner drive.

Click to expand...

Yes you did.
Quote:

Secure erase works by writing ones and zeros to the drive many many times, substituting ones for zeros on each pass thereby reducing (eliminating for all practical purposes) any residual magnetism left from any data previously stored on the drive.

When run on an SSD this just causes massive, excess reads and writes and reduces the lifespan of the flash memory ICs.

Click to expand...

The Op ran a secure erase program meant for a spinner drive on his SSD.

eladril · May 7, 2016

Guys. I don't mean to sound presumptuous here, but have you even read my posts.. I used a dedicated utility provided by Crucial specifically designed to run firmware-level secure erase, YES, compatible with my device. It's called Crucial Storage Executive, it's fairly new.

Anyways.. I got myself a new drive right now, I don't have conclusively determined that the old one is dead, I'm messaging with hdparm's creator Mark Lord now to figure out if anything can be done.

Thank you all for help

billbartuska · May 7, 2016

Ah! I see.

Sanitize Drive:
This operation removes all data, including partitions, from the targeted drive. This will leave the drive in a state requiring reinitialization for further use. This process will force a reboot of your system to complete so, as with the firmware update, ensure you are prepared before allowing the reboot to continue.
This function can be run on your OS drive, so be careful you do not accidentally run this on an undesired target, as this process is irreversible.
On a password-protected TCG-enabled drive this function will be unavailable, as shown above, and a PSID revert will need to be used in its place.

This is where you had a problem? " Utility halted shortly after started, with an error."

PSID Revert:
This returns an SSD to its original state if it has been TCG-enabled with a drive password, locking the hardware encryption, and can no longer be accessed using the original credentials, such as if the password is lost. This will also remove all data from the drive similar to the Sanitize Drive operation. This process requires the user to enter the 32-character PSID printed on the drive's label. It will immediately begin the operation and after a few seconds indicate the PSID Revert has completed and all data has been removed from the SSD.

Crucial Storage Executive is available as a free download here. If you require any assistance using your SSD, Storage Executive, or otherwise need to contact Crucial, the Contact Support link in the upper right will give you options to reach Crucial for assistance. You can also visit this page for additional support options.

secure erase caused ssd to become undetectable

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