Sanitize or Secure Erase SSD? What's the Difference?

Wiping SSD is different from wiping HDD

Wiping the hard drive is necessary in some situations. For example, if you would like to reuse or resell an old hard drive, you’d better wipe hard drive beforehand so that the old data cannot be recovered easily by any tools.

Wiping SSD is different from wiping HDD since the way of storing data to SSD is different from the way to HDD. HDD is essentially a metal platter with a magnetic coating that stores your data; while SSD stored data on interconnected flash memory chips. It is doomed that they need different wiping methods. If you use the same way of wiping HDD to wipe SSD, it may damage the SSD and decrease its lifespan. To wipe SSD, sanitize or secure erase SSD will be much safer. But which one to choose?

Sanitize VS. Secure Erase SSD: What’s the Difference?

Secure Erase and Sanitize both securely erase the data on the SSD and reset the SSD to factory settings. After you Sanitize or Secure Erase SSD, all data will be permanently removed on the solid-state drive and cannot be recovered. But there are some differences between those two methods.

Secure Erase only deletes the mapping table but will not erase all blocks that have been written to. However, Sanitize will delete the mapping table and will erase all blocks that have been written to. Thus, Secure Erase is faster to complete than Sanitize. But not all SSD support Sanitize. For example, if you want to know whether your SanDisk SSD supports Sanitize, you need to refer to the SanDisk SSD Dashboard to check it.

How to Sanitize SSD or Secure Erase SSD?

To Sanitize SSD, you need to see if your SSD support Sanitize. If it supports, you can check out the following steps to learn how to Sanitize or Secure Erase SSD.

Part 1. Sanitize SSD drive

Sanitizing is to remove sensitive data from a system or storage device so that data cannot be recovered by any known technique. Sanitizing SSD using ATA Secure Erase is the most effective. ATA Secure Erase will wipe the entire contents of a drive. When an ATA Secure Erase command is issued against an SSD’s built-in controller (SSD should support ATA Secure Erase), the SSD controller resets all its storage cells as empty, in other words, it restores the SSD to factory default settings and restores SSD performance. But different SSD would have a different way to Sanitize or Secure Erase SSD.

Here we will introduce you to how to Sanitize SSD or Secure Erase SSD. If you are using SanDisk SSD, then you can go to the SanDisk SSD Dashboard to see if the SanDisk SSD support Sanitize. 

1. Get into the SSD Dashboard, select Tools tab.

2. In the Tools Tab, select Sanitize.

3. 1). If you are planning to sanitize the non-system SSD, then, you can simply select Erase and follow the prompts to sanitize SSD.

3. 2).  If the SSD you are planning to sanitize is a system drive, you need to choose "Create a bootable USB" drive that can be used to sanitize the boot SSD.

Restart your computer with the bootable USB you created, and follow the prompts to sanitize SSD.

Part 2. Secure Erase SSD

If you do not want to Sanitize SSD or your SSD does not support Sanitize, you can make use of Secure Erase SSD. The SanDisk SSD Dashboard also provides you the function of Secure Erase SSD. Just get into the Tools, select Secure Erase SSD, and follow the prompts to secure erase SSD. You may be reminded that the selected SSD is in a Security Frozen state and the Secure Erase can continue. Then, you can unfreeze the SSD by the following steps:

1. Disconnect the power cable to the SSD.

2. Re-connect the power cable to the SSD.

3. Click the Select Drive Refresh button and then perform Secure Erase again.

Afterward, restart the operations. If you get this message again, this drive cannot be erased.

However, those are the ways of sanitizing or secure erase SanDisk SSD. If you are using other SSDs, you’ll need other ways to wipe SSD. Well, in order to manage all brands of SSD drive, here we highly recommend you a great hard drive manager, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, which can help you secure erase SSD and restore its peak performance, no matter you are using SanDisk SSD, or Kingston SSD, Samsung SSD, Toshiba SSD, etc. Here are the steps of how to secure erase SSD with AOMEI Partition Assistant. (PS. The Demo Version is for free download and trial.)

Step 1. You need to prepare a Windows 7 computer. Connect your SSD to the Windows 7 computer. Then, install and launch it. It will show you the basic situations of your hard drives. Right-click the SSD, and select Secure Erase SSD.

Note: It will give you a notice that this operation would erase all data on the solid-state drive. If you have any important data on the hard drive, back data to cloud or external at first. before erasing. Click Next to move on.

Step 2. Here you need to choose the SSD that needed to be securely erased. Click Next.

Step 3. Here you may meet the problem that your SSD is in a frozen state. Click “here” in the picture to do a hot-swap for this SSD to relieve the frozen state.

Step 4. After reliving the frozen state of the SSD, you can continue to secure erase SSD with AOMEI Partition Assistant. When it complete, it will remind you that the SSD has been erased successfully. Click Finish.

This is the whole progress of how secure erase SSD with AOMEI Partition Assistant. If you want to sanitize or secure erase SSD, you can try this tool. Its friendly interface allows you to operate it easily. Besides, it has the “Wipe Hard Drive” features, wiping HDD, USB flash drive, SD card, and more. It has many other features that can help you manage your hard drive in the best status like repartition hard drive, upgrade hard drive without reinstallation, clone SSD drive, align SSD partitions, etc