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Secure erase + Vertex 2 + Gparted = Headache

Muscle Master

Muscle Master

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 15, 2010
581
113
Philadelphia
okay here is the deal..

I have a Macbook Pro (2010) with a Vertex 2 SDD with about.. 60% degradtion (yes im serious) and I'm trying to do a secure erase via bootable Gparted cd rom..

Now Gparted boots fine but when I issue the " hdparm -I /dev/sda " command and the output command would say " Access Denied " and it seems to be that way with every other command.. it's like I don't have access to my ssd at all!!!

How do I fix this.. I only have my macbook pro and my cousin's netbook so... can I get some help?
 
Have you tried using a Linux CD and to put the system in sleep mode? Upon wake the drive should appear "not frozen". From there you can use the Linux terminal to issue the same commands.
 
WMuntean said:
Have you tried using a Linux CD and to put the system in sleep mode? Upon wake the drive should appear "not frozen". From there you can use the Linux terminal to issue the same commands.
Click to expand...

Would I be able to download it off the net and if yes where..
 
WMuntean said:
Have you tried using a Linux CD and to put the system in sleep mode? Upon wake the drive should appear "not frozen". From there you can use the Linux terminal to issue the same commands.
Click to expand...

but it seems that linux can't boot on a macbook pro.. unless I'm missing something
 
Gparted and HFS+ generally do not play nice together and I think that's your main problem. Plus which liveCD are you using to boot off. Ubuntu will give you a different result then Fedora. Some distros need certain boot flags at startup to boot up on a mac, so its impossible to say whether its Gparted causing the problem or Linux.

I think you may be better off getting the utilities from OCZ to erase the SSD
 
maflynn said:
Gparted and HFS+ generally do not play nice together and I think that's your main problem. Plus which liveCD are you using to boot off. Ubuntu will give you a different result then Fedora. Some distros need certain boot flags at startup to boot up on a mac, so its impossible to say whether its Gparted causing the problem or Linux.

I think you may be better off getting the utilities from OCZ to erase the SSD
Click to expand...

Don't I need windows to run ocz utilities or it will run fine on OSx
 
Like someone said before, right before you run the ATA secure erase command, you need to put the laptop in sleep mode (close the lid) and then wake it up.

hdparm -I output should now say "not locked"

Code: 
Security: 
       Master password revision code = 65534
               supported
       not     enabled
       not     locked
       not     frozen
       not     expired: security count
               supported: enhanced erase
       2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

Then you can proceed to secure erase. Otherwise, you will get permission denied.
edit: read that you cannot even issue the hdparm -I command ... are you root? issue the command as "sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda[whatever]"
 
Muscle Master said:
but it seems that linux can't boot on a macbook pro.. unless I'm missing something
Click to expand...

I my setup used two CD drives; A bootable rEFit CD and a Ubuntu 10.10 LiveCD

Although it has been said that some MBPs recognize the Ubuntu CD with out problems, mine did not. I also didn't want to install rEFit on my computer so I used a boot CD of it. You can use rEFit to boot from a Ubuntu LiveUSB which then only requires 1 CD drive, but I already had a Ubuntu CD made.

Not sure if that cleared anything up. Obviously, if there were some OS X tools that did this natively it would be your first option, but I don't know of any.
 
fehhkk said:
Like someone said before, right before you run the ATA secure erase command, you need to put the laptop in sleep mode (close the lid) and then wake it up.

hdparm -I output should now say "not locked"

Code: 
Security: 
       Master password revision code = 65534
               supported
       not     enabled
       not     locked
       not     frozen
       not     expired: security count
               supported: enhanced erase
       2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

Then you can proceed to secure erase. Otherwise, you will get permission denied.
edit: read that you cannot even issue the hdparm -I command ... are you root? issue the command as "sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda[whatever]"
Click to expand...

That worked!!! and my drive is not locked but forzen. now how do I sleep this thing cause when I close the lid it stays on.. you can see the light from the screen..
 
Muscle Master said:
That worked!!! and my drive is not locked but forzen. now how do I sleep this thing cause when I close the lid it stays on.. you can see the light from the screen..
Click to expand...

FYI, others report that the sleep trick doesn't work on GParted. Let us know if you get it to work.
 
Muscle Master said:
That worked!!! and my drive is not locked but forzen. now how do I sleep this thing cause when I close the lid it stays on.. you can see the light from the screen..
Click to expand...

Sleep the macbook without closing the lid by pressing Command - Shift - Eject ... but not sure if that's a Mac OS keystroke combo or a system combo. hmm...

Anyways, the system needs to be able to go to sleep for the drive to become unfrozen and unlocked.
 
Okay.. I could'nt get it to sleep.. so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and ran the sudo hdparm command and it now say it's not frozen

Since im on a role now.. I don't want to ruin everything

Can someone in detail tell me what do do next!!! lol im on my knees

PS. it also say Enhance erase not supported.. hopefully it doenst mean secure erase
 
Hey guys.. I'm trying to wipe my my ssd again, but I can't boot into gparted for some reason.. keep getting a error message.. this is on a 2011 MBP 13 vs the 2010 some months ago

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
 

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Secure erase (and programs like them) do very little to actually wipe an SSD. Even NSA programs leave a lot of data recoverable on SSD's. All it really does is cause even more wear on the SSD. The only way to really erase an SSD is to encrypt it and then delete the files and the encryption keys, anything else is almost useless.
 
altecXP said:
Secure erase (and programs like them) do very little to actually wipe an SSD. Even NSA programs leave a lot of data recoverable on SSD's. All it really does is cause even more wear on the SSD. The only way to really erase an SSD is to encrypt it and then delete the files and the encryption keys, anything else is almost useless.
Click to expand...

The only way to really erase an SSD is to issue an ATA_SECURE_ERASE command which is what the OP is trying to do.
 
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