Secure erase from Terminal

[Tech198]

From using Sierra, all you had to do from specify the identifier /dev/disks2 when doing a secure erase, but now i'm on HS, it seems Apple's changed this a bit...

More specially, its now the "partition", instead of the "volume"... etc.. eg 23.7 Gig in this example, instead of the entire 250gig as before..

Is this correnct ? as i wish to secure wipe free space of my *entire* ssd, not just a portion of it.

Looks like you now have a 'container' scheme which never used to be there in sierra.. Perhaps that's why ?

 

[Ritsuka]

"Secure erase" is useless on a SSD. The only way to erase data on a SSD is to use one of those apps that send the reset command to the SSD and deletes everything.

 

[Fishrrman]

To add to what Ritsuka wrote above, you could try downloading the "parted magic" iso, burn a CD, boot from it, and run the "ATA Secure Erase" command from there.

It might -- or might not -- work.

 

[BLUEDOG314]

From internet recovery, not the recovery on the internal storage, open terminal and run 'diskutil unmountdisk disk0'. Once the internal drive is unmounted, your can do 'diskutil zerodisk disk0' or 'diskutil randomdisk disk0' and wait for the command to finish. This writes zeros or random data respectively over the drive.

 

[Tech198]

I'm just wondering why the change, to the "container" That's all. and now use specific /disk1s1 instead of /dev/disk0 as before..

 

[dsemf]

I'm just wondering why the change, to the "container" That's all. and now use specific /disk1s1 instead of /dev/disk0 as before..

When upgrading to High Sierra, the APFS conversion changes the individual partitions to volumes within a container which contains the usable space on the SSD. The container is assigned /dev/disk1.

Each volume can grow and shrink as needed. When I decided to install the Mojave public beta, I created a Mojave volume and did the install. After I do the production upgrade, I will delete the Mojave volume.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         500.1 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +500.1 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            189.3 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 72.5 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.0 GB     disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Mojave                  44.2 GB    disk1s5

DS

 

[Spudner]

When did Apple remove the "erase free space" option from its OS? I can't find it anywhere in High Sierra. Is it possible to erase free space in High Sierra using Terminal? If so, is it safe to use?