įor other SSDs with integrated encryption, which do not sufficiently document the behavior of a secure erase, deleting the SSD blocks using trim would be recommended in addition to a secure erase, in order to get the ideal performance for re-use of the SSDs. For Sandisk SSDs the behavior is differnt, a Secure Erase does not erase all NAND. The primary reason is that a secure erase should return performance to its initial state even with these SSDs. When asked at the end of the Optimizing Solid-State Drive (SSD) Performance for Data Center Applications session at Intel Developer Forum 2011, Tahmid Rahman, Intel Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, informed us that the Intel 320 Series SSDs and Intel 710 Series SSDs with integrated encryption would also continue to delete the flash blocks despite this ability to delete only the key.

Deleting the key would be sufficient to for a secure erase the data could then no longer be decrypted, but would still physically exist. Such SSDs automatically encrypt all data that has been written. The SSD will then be usable at its original ideal performance level, since all pages can be written directly (see Solid State Drive - Writing).įor the newer SSDs with integrated encryption, secure erase may be implemented differently.

Most SSDs support secure erase, executing it for the physical deletion of all blocks on the SSD. According to the ATA specification, a secure erase should guarantee the secure erasure of all stored data on a storage medium.

Secure erase free