How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#1

Post by bitshift955 » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 10:22 AM UTC

How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD
backblaze.com

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#2

Post by cperciva » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 10:55 AM UTC

One option they don't mention: Thermite. Seriously, if you physically melt the chips, they're not going to retain any information.

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#3

Post by amelius » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:11 AM UTC

See also [1], for a description of why erasing flash memory can't be done reliably with just "dd".

Also, I find it disappointing that the GNU "shred" utility [2] apparently does not work as expected.

[1] http://www.noah.org/wiki/Dd_-_Destroyer_of_Disks#caveat_on_F...

[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/shre...

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#4

Post by chinathrow » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:17 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #2

One option they don't mention: Thermite. Seriously, if you physically melt the chips, they're not going to retain any information.

Indeed.

http://frank.geekheim.de/?p=2423 (German)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ckechIqW0

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#5

Post by amelius » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:18 AM UTC

> Lock It Up and Throw Away the (Encryption) Key

That might get you into a lot of legal problems, [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#6

Post by a-ve » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:19 AM UTC

Related CCC talk:

https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2015-6799-how_to_destroy_a_laptop...

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#7

Post by chinathrow » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:19 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #5

> Lock It Up and Throw Away the (Encryption) Key That might get you into a lot of legal problems, [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

As a company depending on your legal requirements, yes.

As a private person? I think not so much.

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#8

Post by comboy » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:21 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #5

> Lock It Up and Throw Away the (Encryption) Key That might get you into a lot of legal problems, [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

You mean filling your disk with some random bits? Is white noise already illegal?

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#9

Post by djaychela » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:24 AM UTC

I'm constantly amazed at the waste that happens when people decide they are going to destroy an old (serviceable) hard drive because they want to protect their old data on it.

I don't see a need in 99% of cases, when there are perfectly good ways to permanently delete the data and make it unrecoverable, albeit taking a longer time. No doubt I'll get shot to bits for this with various edge cases where it's important that the data is not recoverable, but the environmental cost of people destroying perfectly good drives because they want to upgrade and think that drilling or thermite is the way forward needs to be taken into account. Yes, it's quick to do the drilling, but is it really necessary when a free piece of software will render the same drive usable but without any real chance of access to the data that's on there?

We live in an increasingly throwaway society, but I'm certain that we will be viewed with true disgust by future generations when they see how knowingly profligate we have been with the resources we had access to.

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#10

Post by nagvx » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 11:25 AM UTC

Why no proper mention of ATA Secure Erase? It's not an Apple feature, it's a low level SSD feature designed for this.