............for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.

Free, or otherwise.

Please help as all the options are confusing.

Thanks.

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:20:06 +1000, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:

>...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
>Free, or otherwise.
>
>Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
>Thanks.

You might try searching for: file shredder programs

I tried that search. One of the responses was headed -

32 Best Free Shredder Programs (July 2021) - Lifewire

Best of luck!

On 7/19/2021 9:20 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
> Free, or otherwise.

I use a big hammer for all such tasks.

>
> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
> Thanks.
>

Peter Jason wrote:
> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
> Free, or otherwise.
>
> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
> Thanks.

Heidi Eraser, but you must plan in advance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraser_%28software%29

https://eraser.heidi.ie

The Sysinternals.com "sdelete" will erase white-space, which
includs all sorts of temporary copies of files that you're
unaware of. In an administrator command prompt, try

sdelete64 -z C:

for example. Once you do that, programs which promise to
"unerase" files will tell you all the recoverable files
are "red" or worse (which means they can't be recovered any
more). Cleansing empty $MFT entries reduces the ability to
recover files. The first pass of sdelete64 erases unused
clusters, the second pass attempts to do something to unused
$MFT entries.

Where Heidi comes in, is Heidi concerns itself with something
called a "cluster tip", which means a fraction of a file may
miss getting erased via other means. Heidi is much more picky
on this topic, than your average "mallet" tool.

I can tell you, I did some "amateur shredding" after seeding a
disk with detectable text strings, and I was, um, "shocked"
at just how many instances of my test text string were still
detectable. Could have been a couple hundred of them. If you're
a badass, you're taking an awful chance with this shredding
idea. For Heidi, this might mean installing Heidi and having
it track what's going on, from early in the OS usage. I don't
know any more than that about the topic, other than to read the
instructions. because the risk is, if you don't read the instructions,
that information leak will be "huge". When I did my test, I
figured I might see "one or two little leaks" for being
clumsy, but when I saw what an awful mess still existed,
I realized I would never be the "Joe Secret" guy on my street :-)

This is not a topic where you "become a Hero by installing One App".
You have to work at this, to get good at it, salting test strings,
using HxD and looking for leaks, and so on. Similarly, the developers
at Heidi began to realize after a while, that the project they'd
taken on, didn't look as simple as when they started. The forum
still had technical discussions, after they'd been at it for
several years. That's how much customer test it takes to cover
all the bases.

Paul

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:42:40 +1000, Monty <monty@home.invalid> wrote:

>On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:20:06 +1000, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:
>
>>...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>>
>>
>>Free, or otherwise.
>>
>>Please help as all the options are confusing.
>>
>>Thanks.
>
>You might try searching for: file shredder programs
>
>I tried that search. One of the responses was headed -
>
> 32 Best Free Shredder Programs (July 2021) - Lifewire
Non seem to indicate if SSDs are shreddable.
>
>
>Best of luck!

In article <06hcfg5mmr8lq8djremsbglshilj459af9@4ax.com>, Peter Jason
<pj@jostle.com> wrote:

> Non seem to indicate if SSDs are shreddable.

due to wear-leveling, it's highly likely that some parts of a file will
remain on the ssd, although not easily accessible.

Peter Jason wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:42:40 +1000, Monty <monty@home.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:20:06 +1000, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>>>
>>>
>>> Free, or otherwise.
>>>
>>> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>> You might try searching for: file shredder programs
>>
>> I tried that search. One of the responses was headed -
>>
>> 32 Best Free Shredder Programs (July 2021) - Lifewire
> Non seem to indicate if SSDs are shreddable.
>>
>> Best of luck!
>

SSD: Do a TRIM and move on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_%28computing%29

Paul

On 7/19/21 6:20 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
> Free, or otherwise.
>
> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
> Thanks.
>

Take a look at Bleach Bit:

https://www.bleachbit.org/download/windows

On 7/19/21 9:19 PM, T wrote:
> On 7/19/21 6:20 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>>
>>
>> Free, or otherwise.
>>
>> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>
>
> Take a look at Bleach Bit:
>
> https://www.bleachbit.org/download/windows
>
>

If you are comfortable with Linux, boot off a live USB,
then do a dd with if=/dev/zero. It will whack everything
and turn all your charges off

T wrote:
> On 7/19/21 9:19 PM, T wrote:
>> On 7/19/21 6:20 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
>>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>>>
>>>
>>> Free, or otherwise.
>>>
>>> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Take a look at Bleach Bit:
>>
>> https://www.bleachbit.org/download/windows
>>
>>
>
> If you are comfortable with Linux, boot off a live USB,
> then do a dd with if=/dev/zero. It will whack everything
> and turn all your charges off

You know you can do that in Windows too,
and with a whole lot less drama.

Administrator Command Prompt

diskpart

list disk
select disk 2
clean all <=== Erases every byte of that non-system drive
Zeroed from end to end
exit

*******

If you open Task Manager, add Disk Read and Disk Write to
the Details display, you can watch as some process erases
your disk. If the drive is 500GB, then you'd see a number
with 500 and a lot of zeros on the end, in Task Manager. This
allows you to monitor what percent done it is at present.

You can use perfmon.msc and monitor instantaneous I/O rate
to the disk.

*******

If you want to erase the system drive, use the installer DVD
for Windows, select Troubleshooting, then Command Prompt,
then use the above sequence on disk 1 or whatever.

*******

You can also do, as a sub-sequence

list disk
select disk 2
list partition
select partition 1
detail partition
select partition 2
detail partition
....

as a means to collect information about whether you're
attacking the right disk or not.

Paul

On 20/07/2021 06.02, Paul wrote:
> Peter Jason wrote:
>> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:42:40 +1000, Monty <monty@home.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:20:06 +1000, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Free, or otherwise.
>>>>
>>>> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>> You might try searching for:   file shredder programs
>>>
>>> I tried that search.  One of the responses was headed -
>>>
>>> 32 Best Free Shredder Programs (July 2021) - Lifewire
>> Non seem to indicate if SSDs are shreddable.
>>>
>>> Best of luck!
>>
>
> SSD: Do a TRIM and move on.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_%28computing%29

Not that simple.

When you delete a file, for example in a FAT hard disk, the used sectors
are simply marked deleted in the FAT table, but the data itself is left
alone.

The trim algorithm in firmware doesn't know about those sectors, unless
you overwrite them with something. You must do that first, then call a
trim operation, which in effect finally destroys all data that was in there.

Wikipedia:

Because of the way that many file systems handle delete operations, by
flagging data blocks as "not in use",[7][8] storage media (SSDs, but
also traditional hard drives) generally do not know which sectors/pages
are truly in use and which can be considered free space. Contrary to
(for example) an overwrite operation, a delete will not involve a
physical write to the sectors that contain the data. Since a common SSD
has no knowledge of the file system structures, including the list of
unused blocks/sectors, the storage medium remains unaware that the
blocks have become available. While this often enables undelete tools to
recover files from electromechanical hard disks,[8][9] despite the files
being reported as "deleted" by the operating system, it also means that
when the operating system later performs a write operation to one of the
sectors, which it considers free space, it effectively becomes an
overwrite operation from the point of view of the storage medium. For
magnetic disks, an overwrite of existing data is no different from
writing into an empty sector, but because of how some SSDs function at
the lowest level, an overwrite produces significant overhead compared to
writing data into an empty page, potentially crippling write
performance.[8][10]

Now, don't try to overwrite multiple times the erased sectors on SSD.
Pointless and ages the disk, kills lives.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

In article <d09cfg9erbbs2069p0si6brc6ku6sl9u5i@4ax.com>, pj@jostle.com says...
>
> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
> Free, or otherwise.
>
> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
> Thanks.

An important lesson from Tom, here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOO1Z4u2Aq4

--

Phil, London

On 7/20/2021 6:41 AM, Philip Herlihy wrote:
> In article <d09cfg9erbbs2069p0si6brc6ku6sl9u5i@4ax.com>, pj@jostle.com says...
>>
>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>>
>>
>> Free, or otherwise.
>>
>> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> An important lesson from Tom, here...
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOO1Z4u2Aq4
>
While I delete very few files and shred fewer, McAfee security suit has
a shredder function in the suit. If you are using the security
software form your ISP you may already have a shredder program.

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 11:20:06, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote (my
responses usually follow points raised):
>...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
>Free, or otherwise.
>
>Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
>Thanks.

Why are you asking: is it that you want to donate/sell the SSD (or
computer)? Or you've been doing something naughty (or at least secret,
even something as boring as financial details) and are definitely
finished now?

I deduce since you specify only erased files, and that it's a system
SSD, that you want to be able to continue using it afterwards.

(As others have said, the wear-levelling algorithms in the firmware of
an SSD mean even an apparent overwrite is unlikely to actually do so;
you'd have to write to all unused space on the SSD [and it being a
system drive probably makes that not easy]. Even doing that won't
guarantee there are no fragments in segments that have been swapped out
as bad.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Anything you add for security will slow the computer but it shouldn't be
significant or prolonged. Security software is to protect the computer, not
the primary use of the computer.
- VanguardLH in alt.windows7.general, 2018-1-28

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 06:58:00, knuttle <keith_nuttle@sbcglobal.net>
wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
[]
>> In article <d09cfg9erbbs2069p0si6brc6ku6sl9u5i@4ax.com>,
>>pj@jostle.com says...
>>>
>>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
[]
>While I delete very few files and shred fewer, McAfee security suit has
>a shredder function in the suit. If you are using the security

[Is it in the jacket or the trousers? (-:]

>software form your ISP you may already have a shredder program.

Trouble is, if such shredder software was written before SSDs, it won't
work at low level; most shredder software works by overwriting (for the
"military grade" ones, overwriting several times, with say 0000, 1111,
0101, 1010, and random data). But the electronics in an SSD will - even
if told specifically to write to cylinder X sector Y - select different
cells, so _won't_ overwrite the original; the translation is done
internally to the SSD.

I would _hope_ McAfee - if up to date - _would_ know about SSDs; for
something provided by an ISP, only if updated recently, and possibly not
even then.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Anything you add for security will slow the computer but it shouldn't be
significant or prolonged. Security software is to protect the computer, not
the primary use of the computer.
- VanguardLH in alt.windows7.general, 2018-1-28

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 12:18:54 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

>On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 06:58:00, knuttle <keith_nuttle@sbcglobal.net>
>wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
>[]
>>> In article <d09cfg9erbbs2069p0si6brc6ku6sl9u5i@4ax.com>,
>>>pj@jostle.com says...
>>>>
>>>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>[]
>>While I delete very few files and shred fewer, McAfee security suit has
>>a shredder function in the suit. If you are using the security
>
>[Is it in the jacket or the trousers? (-:]
>
>>software form your ISP you may already have a shredder program.
>
>Trouble is, if such shredder software was written before SSDs, it won't
>work at low level; most shredder software works by overwriting (for the
>"military grade" ones, overwriting several times, with say 0000, 1111,
>0101, 1010, and random data). But the electronics in an SSD will - even
>if told specifically to write to cylinder X sector Y - select different
>cells, so _won't_ overwrite the original; the translation is done
>internally to the SSD.
>
>I would _hope_ McAfee - if up to date - _would_ know about SSDs; for
>something provided by an ISP, only if updated recently, and possibly not
>even then.

Lesson Learned: Don't buy SSD drives if you have such as Debbie Does
Cleveland on your drive.

Glary Utilities Free has all the features you want and more.

Peter Jason wrote:
> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
> Free, or otherwise.
>
> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
> Thanks.
>

ray@gpost.com wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 12:18:54 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
> <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 06:58:00, knuttle <keith_nuttle@sbcglobal.net>
>> wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
>> []
>>>> In article <d09cfg9erbbs2069p0si6brc6ku6sl9u5i@4ax.com>,
>>>> pj@jostle.com says...
>>>>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>> []
>>> While I delete very few files and shred fewer, McAfee security suit has
>>> a shredder function in the suit. If you are using the security
>> [Is it in the jacket or the trousers? (-:]
>>
>>> software form your ISP you may already have a shredder program.
>> Trouble is, if such shredder software was written before SSDs, it won't
>> work at low level; most shredder software works by overwriting (for the
>> "military grade" ones, overwriting several times, with say 0000, 1111,
>> 0101, 1010, and random data). But the electronics in an SSD will - even
>> if told specifically to write to cylinder X sector Y - select different
>> cells, so _won't_ overwrite the original; the translation is done
>> internally to the SSD.
>>
>> I would _hope_ McAfee - if up to date - _would_ know about SSDs; for
>> something provided by an ISP, only if updated recently, and possibly not
>> even then.
>
> Lesson Learned: Don't buy SSD drives if you have such as Debbie Does
> Cleveland on your drive.

Enhanced Secure Erase comes closest to a working solution.

However, this is a lousy way to manage an SSD and quite wasteful.

Like, say you used DBAN, every time there was a knock at the door.
That wouldn't exactly be practical.

Secure Erase and Enhanced Secure Erase are "posted" commands, meaning
if the power goes off in the middle of the operation, the drive is supposed
to pick up where it left off. You don't even have to wait for it to
complete. It is unclear whether the posted status can be modified by,
say, law enforcement, on demand.

Now, a clever way to erase devices, is use the hardware-supported
FDE (Full Disk Encryption). When the key is changed on the drive,
the drive is rendered garbage instantly. And would only be recoverable if
the key was known to someone, and there was a mechanism to inject it.
(There is nothing saying a drive must offer an easy-peasy way to
fit a key. The key interface could support way fewer options than
the logical ones. You could set the key up, so that the only
logical button on the outside was "generate random new key". And
basically every time such a command was issued, the data would be
unreadable, and only newly written data would be readable.)

I agree with the general sentiment though - if you're
"The Shredder Guy", an SSD is an awful choice. A hard drive
has a tiny leak potential (during sector sparing), but this
is nine orders of magnitude better than what SSDs do :-)

Paul

On 7/19/21 10:25 PM, Paul wrote:
>  a whole lot less drama.

Where is the fun in that ?!?!?!

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:20:06 +1000, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:

>...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>
>
>Free, or otherwise.
>
>Please help as all the options are confusing.
>
>Thanks.

Thanks to all.

My computer says I have a...
SCSI\DiskNVMe______________Samsung_SSD_970_EVO_Plus_500GB1B2QEXM7

And that I need Samsung Magician V6, which contains a "secure erase".
The brochure says...

"Secure Erase Permanently delete sensitive data without compromising
the functionality of your SSD."

I'll check this out & report back.

Peter Jason wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:20:06 +1000, Peter Jason <pj@jostle.com> wrote:
>
>> ...........for deleting, permantely, all erased files on a system SSD.
>>
>>
>> Free, or otherwise.
>>
>> Please help as all the options are confusing.
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> Thanks to all.
>
> My computer says I have a...
> SCSI\DiskNVMe______________Samsung_SSD_970_EVO_Plus_500GB1B2QEXM7
>
> And that I need Samsung Magician V6, which contains a "secure erase".
> The brochure says...
>
>
> "Secure Erase Permanently delete sensitive data without compromising
> the functionality of your SSD."
>
> I'll check this out & report back.

You know that is complete device erasure, from MBR to
last track on the device. Secure Erase is pretty thorough.
Enhanced Secure Erase, treats both the standard clusters
and the overprovisioning, as one giant thing to erase, so
it is marginally better. It would take, say, a damaged
flash block, and try and erase and overwrite it anyway.
That's what is called "best effort", when you take
a damaged storage location and try and overwrite it.
You can't do more than that, short of hammering the
snot out of the thing in your workshop :-)

You should know, that "Toolbox" software is hardly prize
winning stuff. The first SSD I bought, the Secure Erase was
a breeze to use. It left me with the impression they'd
all be that easy. Well, no. None of the other toolboxes
worked worth a darn. It's like nobody tested them or something.

It was only with the Corsair Neutron that I had a good user
experience on their Toolbox. Even if I did take the SSD back to the
store for s refund :-) You see, at the time, I didn't know how TLC
worked, I didn't know TLC arrives "mushy" when you get it,
and needs to be overwritten before your first benchmark. I
was only getting 1/4 of the stated read rate, but that's because
it's TLC, and it would "perk up" a tiny bit, if overwritten
from end to end. You would get 3/4 of the stated read rate,
after "freshening".

Paul