After 5 years of typing up class papers and worksheets for your first job, the laptop you got your sophomore year of college is now slow and you’ve just purchased its replacement. The new laptop is fast and can handle all the programs you need to run for your job but what do you do with your old laptop?
The old laptop has tax information, personal photos, videos, logins, that are just sitting on it. If your laptop has an SSD (Solid State Drive) then it is essential that a wipe tool is used to truly and securely eradicate the data.
Memory chips in SSDs go bad quicker than hard drive platters so SSD’s are built with extra memory chips. For example, a 100GB SSD could have 124GB of storage. This storage is not available to the laptop but the SSD uses this extra space to save your data. The extra space causes an issue when wiping an SSD because some data may still be present in memory cells not accessible to the operating system. Only a firmware erasure by a wipe tool can access all the potential data.
“DATA ON AN SSD CAN BE RECOVERED UNLESS A SUPPORTED FIRMWARE WIPE IS USED ”
With WipeDrive you can securely erase any Mac, Linux or Windows laptop. This is because WipeDrive uses firmware and logical overwrite patterns to securely erase Solid State Drives (SSDs) from all memory cells of the SSD.
WipeDrive has been securely erasing computers since 1998 and supports military grade SSD overwrite patterns. We will go through the steps you need to do to erase any computer running an SSD.
Erase an SSD with WipeDrive
If you have never erased an SSD before, don’t worry WipeDrive has made it very simple. Below are the steps which you can take to wipe your computer.
- WipeDrive will boot to an activation page. Enter your activation code and press ‘Enter’.
- The next page lists all of the SSDs WipeDrive has found on your computer. Select the SSDs you need to erase and click ‘Next’.
- WipeDrive will now ask you which Overwrite Pattern you would like to use. Select the default pattern – ‘NIST 800-88r1 (recommended)’ and click ‘Next’.
- You will then be warned that all the data on the SSD(s) will be securely erased. Select ‘Wipe Now’ to erase your data.
- WipeDrive will now show the results of the wiping. If your wipe is ‘Successful’ you’re all set! Go ahead and donate, sell or throw away your laptop. Your data is securely eradicated.
About the price
WipeDrive will display the SSDs you can erase but you will not be able to erase the SSDs without purchasing a license. The license to erase one SSD is $19.95. If you have multiple or need a high volume of SSDs erased, you can get a discounted pricing. Here’s the link to download WipeDrive.
Filed in . Read more about Linux, Mac Os, Software, Sponsored and Windows.