Secure Erase w/ gparted or Windows TRIM?

[Jimbogiant]

Hi there,

My OSX installation was recently corrupted so I've decided to do a clean re-installation on it. I have a Sandforce SSD, and some of the symptoms have been much longer boot times than I had gotten used to (1 minute+ vs under 15 seconds). I know there is some built in garb. collection/"durawrite" tech built in, but I'd like to go ahead and do a "factory reset" so to speak while I'm going through the trouble of reformatting.

After a bit of Mroogle/Google-ing, I've found that the two most-talked-about options are:

1) Boot a gparted live-cd and perform a Secure Erase with hdparm and clean install OS X on the erased disk, or

2) Boot up Windows 7 (installed on optibay HDD separate from OS X on SSD), format the SSD to NTFS, TRIM it (not sure how to invoke the TRIM command in W7 though), reformat to HFS+ and install OS X cleanly.

Is there a consensus as to which of these is the "better" (I.e. faster, easier, more effective) mmethod of restoring a SSD to stock condition/speed?

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

James

 

[Dalton63841]

Secure Erase is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of TRIM. TRIM returns blocks to an UNWRITTEN state. Secure Erase writes 1's and 0's to EVERY SINGLE BLOCK on the drive, in order to overwrite old data.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

1 is preferable, but on my macbook pro I couldnt get gparted to boot. Maybe i didn't try hard enough but oh well. I use it on my spare winboxx all the time and I think it's worth the hassle.

Secure Erase is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of TRIM. TRIM returns blocks to an UNWRITTEN state. Secure Erase writes 1's and 0's to EVERY SINGLE BLOCK on the drive, in order to overwrite old data.

No it's not. Please research ATA SECURE_ERASE in the context of SSDs . Op knows what he's talking about.

From: https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

When a Secure Erase is issued against a SSD drive all its cells will be marked as empty, restoring it to factory default write performance.

 

[Dalton63841]

1 is preferable, but on my macbook pro I couldnt get gparted to boot. Maybe i didn't try hard enough but oh well. I use it on my spare winboxx all the time and I think it's worth the hassle.





No it's not. Please research ATA SECURE_ERASE in the context of SSDs . Op knows what he's talking about.

From: https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

LOL Woops...I didn't read the whole line. I saw Secure erase and though Disk Utility. NVM my first post.