How to Safely Dispose of an SSD
Solid state drives (SSDs) work a little differently than hard drives, and no amount of drilling, demagnetization, or zeroing will actually provide reliable SSD protection. If you need to get rid of an SSD, you have several options: encrypt or destroy. Here’s what you need to know.
If you’re curious about the technical reasons why traditional hard drive formatting or wrecking isn’t the best way to securely erase data on SSDs, Backblaze has an excellent guide detailing why the old hard drive methods don’t work. The short story is that there is no standard method to securely erase data from SSDs, which means that there is no generally accepted option for a secure format for SSDs. Some manufacturers create their own software to format their own hard drives, but it is difficult to test any of them yourself.
Instead, Backblaze ( and others ) suggest two approaches: encrypt the SSD and throw away the key, or destroy it. Shredding an SSD requires a dedicated machine that most of us don’t have access to, so let’s focus on the encryption method. That’s enough for most of us who don’t work on top secret projects, because without the encryption key, an encrypted SSD is just a disk full of random ones and zeros.
If you’ve gotten rid of your SSD for some reason, the process is simple: encrypt it first, format it, and if you want to be very careful, encrypt it again.
This tutorial assumes that you want to delete, wipe, and never access the data on your computer again, so make sure everything is backed up because you won’t be able to access it again.
How to encrypt an SSD on Windows
Windows has built-in encryption software called Bitlocker, which is very easy to set up , but only available for professional users. So, as a free and affordable option, we also love VeraCrypt .
- Download and install VeraCrypt .
- Launch VeraCrypt and choose System> Encrypt System Partition / Disk.
- When prompted, select Basic encryption and click Next.
- Select Encrypt Entire Drive.
- Assuming you have only one operating system installed, select One Time Boot and click Next.
- For the encryption parameters, you can leave the default value: AES for the encryption algorithm and SHA-256 for the hashing algorithm.
- Create a password. You will need to enter this one more time before the process is complete, so write it down now.
- Follow the onscreen instructions to move your mouse pointer and click Next when you’re done.
- When asked to create a rescue disk, click Next. This is a required recovery option and assumes that you want to continue using this SSD.
- Select “1 pass” for Wipe mode and click “Next”.
- Finally, click “Test” to test everything. After restarting your computer, you will be prompted for a password. Enter this and follow the onscreen instructions to complete the encryption process.
Once you’re done, you can ditch the encryption keys, making it nearly impossible to recover data from the SSD if they find it.
How to encrypt SSD on Mac
You can easily encrypt your SSD on Mac with the built-in FileVault encryption tool:
- Open System Preferences and go to Security & Privacy> FileVault.
- Click the lock icon and enter your password.
- Click Turn on FileVault.
- When prompted, select “Create a recovery key and don’t use my iCloud account”, then click “Continue”. Usually you have to make a special note about this recovery key so that you can access it later. Since you are destroying the SSD, this is not a problem.
- Restart your computer when prompted.
Your Mac’s SSD is now encrypted.
You can now format the drive . If you want to be extra careful, encrypt it again after formatting. This ensures that the first encryption key is completely overwritten. It won’t greatly affect the likelihood of someone gaining access to it, but it’s a little better for peace of mind.