[SOLVED] Laptop will be sold. How to wipe SSD including Windows?

Community Support
#1

Hi together,

I want to sell my framework laptop 12th gen. When I ordered it, I ordered it without an windows license and used my own. So I want to sell it with a completely wiped SSD.

Any possibility how to do this on an easy way? Is there a functionality in the BIOS?

Thanks a lot for you help! :slight_smile:

BR

#2

Well you could install Ubuntu 22.04 over the whole NVMe / SSD so the machine would still be usable upon first receipt and see it works OK.

Have you not checked the BIOS? I see no such option on my 11 Gen 3.17

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#3

Doesnt the ubuntu live ISO come with the “shred” command out of the box?

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#4

@amoun Thanks, that could be a possibility. Do you know if Ubuntu 22.04 works smoothly out of the box? Don’t want to put to much effort into fixing problems after the first install.

#5

@Anachron Will have a look at that as well. Thanks! :slight_smile:

#6

I have never needed to do this before but I would strongly recommend against using HDD secure erasure techniques as they are not reliably deleting the data (due to TRIM/wear levelling) and cause significant amount of wear to the flash.

The manufacturer should have a secure wiped / reset function in their software but that might not be possible on a boot drive (I have never tried it) and so might need a second machine and with a second NVME slot or caddy to use the SSD as a external drive.

I believe you can use ATA Secure Erase but in my research it was not clear if this well implemented by all manufactures.

#7

It’s not generally recommended to shred an SSD, as writing to every block will cause undue wear on the flash. There is, however, a way to secure erase an NVMe SSD using the nvme CLI tool. ATA secure erase should work as well, as @Usernames has noted.

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#8

Now that I’m not on my phone …

I took some time to dig up the Arch Linux documentation on how to do this for NVMe drives: Solid state drive/Memory cell clearing - ArchWiki (archlinux.org).

This should work on any Linux LiveCD so long as you have the nvme utility.

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#9

Honestly I rather use 1/600 of the wear and be secure my data is shredded than relying on the vendors to do cell cleaning correctly.

I mean, even for a 2TB drive costing 300€ new 1/600th should be what, 0,50€ less worth?

#10

I have it on my expansion card.

I installed 22.04 and updated to 22.10 I didn’t modify anything and all seems fine.

I don’t use fingerprint on either my Win 11 or Ubuntu but that’s it.

All the best