Once the process is done, repartition and format the drive if you intend to copy data back to it. (Traditional hard drives can take hours, by comparison.) The secure-erase process should take just a few minutes on a modern SSD. Parted Magic contains all the tools you need to restore an SSD to top performance. Definitely use it if you’ve been doing work for the CIA. Some SSDs implement the enhanced version of secure erase by default-which also deletes the drive’s housekeeping data-but if an enhanced erase option is available, you might want to use it. PCWorld’s guide to securely erasing your hard drive explains how to activate secure erase in Parted Magic, which runs on a bootable flash drive. If disconnecting your other hard drives is too much hassle, make darn sure you’ve selected the correct drive to erase throughout this procedure. Parted Magic is a great option for this, since it works as a bootable flash drive. Next, download the drive utility provided by your SSD vendor, or snag Parted Magic.īefore you get down to brass tacks, disconnect all other drives and boot from a flash drive to perform the erase procedure, to avoid accidentally overwriting the wrong drive. It won’t restore to a smaller drive and it sometimes hiccups even with a similar-size drive that has plenty of room. Do not use Windows System Recovery unless you’re restoring the data to the same drive. If you have a working operating system that you’d like to keep, however, use an imaging program such as Acronis True Image or R-Drive Image that copies everything. How to restore your SSD to peak performanceįirst things first: If you have data on the SSD you’d like to retain, back it up. If you’re worried only about backing up files, simply drag and drop them onto a flash drive or external hard drive, or use your favorite backup program. Secure erase, a function built into every ATA-based drive (hard drives and SSDs) since 2001, erases everything on a drive and marks the cells as empty, restoring any modern SSD to factory-fresh default performance. In fact, due to the total absence of utilities that force complete garbage collection, there’s only one way to return a heavily used SSD to pristine, like-new condition immediately- the ATA secure-erase command. Those operations take place at levels above where true garbage collection occurs in an SSD. Yes, simply deleting files and repartitioning and formatting your drive won’t do the trick as it will with a hard drive. But there are several scenarios where these idle cells can add up to a big hit on your SSD’s performance, such as prolonged use in a non-TRIM environment (like XP), after nearly filling the drive and erasing large amounts of data, or simply repartitioning and reformatting without taking an important step. A modern SSD’s performance shouldn’t degrade noticeably for years if even then. Windows 7 and 8 users really needn’t worry about all this. As such, more “used” NAND cells may be left hanging around on your SSD than you’d suspect, according to nearly every vendor and data-recovery specialist I consulted It may not run constantly, and some older operating systems-notably Windows XP-don’t even support the TRIM command. Not all garbage collection (as the erasing used cells and consolidating data in an SSD’s NAND is known) is created equal. NAND memory inside an Intel enterprise-class X-25E Extreme SATA SSD.
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