Request: Resetting an Intel G2 SSD ISO

M

Motaa

Gawd
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Dec 24, 2008
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I tried to use HDD Erase. I really did. I even spent hours looking up how to swap the current iso from 4.0 to 3.3 so that it would be compatible with intel SSDs. I couldn't do it. I keep getting the format error while running the disk.

Could anyone please make the iso for me?

I don't like being spoon fed because learning is better but I just spent me entire morning trying to figure this out and it doesn't work.

I just want an iso which is specifically for wiping intel SSDs back to factory conditions. I'm surprised no one has made one as there are literally hundreds of posts detailing how to mod multiple software together but no one willing to upload a finished, working copy.

No floppy boot disks. USB boot or iso or BOTH would probably help many people out.

Please.
 
I followed this guide after wasting about 5 hours with the various boot disks and bullshit that comes with using all these erase programs to no avail. I finaly found this link and used my Ubuntu Live Cd to great success.
To get the drive to accept a password I had to boot with the drive disconnected and then reconnect it once into the Ubuntu Live Desktop. Worked like a charm, and afterwords I felt stupid for wasting all that time trying to get various programs to work when I had a perfectly simple and effective solution under my nose the entire time.


https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
 
I'm not sure the OP is asking for an ISO that will let him/her do a secure erase, iirc there was some tool out there - provided by Intel - that would "reset" that model of the G2 back to "factory condition" in terms of some particular options for the drive overall.

Besides, doing a "secure wipe" on an SSD, seems like a big waste of writes to me, which are limited on SSD hardware, especially if someone uses those ridiculous 7, 14, and 35 pass wipe procedures.

I could be and just might be wrong about what the OP is actually looking for, guess we all need to wait till that person responds.

If all someone wants is a secure wipe tool, they don't get any better than DBAN and almost every other secure wipe tool you can find actually uses DBAN as the wiping engine for those products.
 
A Secure Erase does not cost any write-cycles; doing a zero-write or DBAN will.

Especially DBAN which writes multiple times at the same sector would be pointless for an SSD; the second time you write, you will actually write to a free cell instead. These utilities probably are better not used on an SSD; its not like SSDs can uncover your hidden data because of magnetism that still stores the older data; you don't have that problem with SSDs.

So a secure erase will reset the performance level without wasting your write cycles. DBAN is not recommended on an SSD.
 
But you are not writing the NAND cells, you are erasing the HPA which is invisible normally. It will wipe the tables that store which areas on the SSD are in use by the host system (i.e. have been previously written to). With this table erased, it would behave as a factory clean SSD.

Else the secure erase would take much longer if it has to write all NAND cells.
 
To be more clear, just download an Ubuntu Live CD iso and make a boot disk. Boot it up and choose the option to test it out without installing anything. This will boot you into a temp Ubuntu desktop. You just go the terminal and follow the instruction on that wiki.

Secure erase took exactly .72 seconds on my SSD.
 
The Parted Magic CD has a nice little disk wiping GUI that includes (Enhanced) Secure Erase. It's always worked great for me on hardware that supports Secure Erase.
 
A link for a bootable ISO of HDDErase 3.3 can be found here.

Just burn as an ISO and you're good to go.
 
Last edited:
nitrobass24 said:
Another vote for SecureErase.
Click to expand...

Are we all talking about the same program?

The one I linked is HDDErase 3.3 which is the program needed for the Intel G1 drives to do a secure erase.

There may be other utilities called Secure Erase but HDDErase is the one that doesn't write your drive to an early grave. :)

There are 2 other additional "erasing" options in HDDErase but IDK what extra things they do.
 
diff programs, but if HDDErase only erases the HPA then it does the same thing.

IE not writing your drive to an early grave as you so eloquently stated.
 
Secure Erase is a feature included in the ATA standard. Pretty much every modern drive has it built in. CMRR's HDDErase, Parted Magic's util, and possibly other programs (I think I've seen others around, but I've never bothered with them, as what I already had worked fine) can initiate the drive's internal Secure Erase command. The Secure Erase command in Intel (and most others, I assume) SSDs erases all the NAND cells, which resets it to a like-new state. On a standard HDD, the command triggers a DBAN-like overwriting of all the drive's data.

There may be confusion between the ATA feature Secure Erase, the general idea of using "secure erase" techniques to completely delete data, and possibly specific applications for this purpose named "Secure Erase" or similar.

FYI
The Host Protected Area (HPA) as defined is a reserved area on a Hard Disk Drive
(HDD) (T13, 2001). It was designed to store information in such a way that it cannot be
easily modified, changed, or accessed by the user, BIOS, or the OS. This area can
contain information ranging from HDD utilities, to diagnostic tools, as well as boot sector
code.
Click to expand...

One benefit of internal Secure Erase is that it can properly delete data from the HPA, while simple software overwriters like DBAN inherently cannot.


sub.mesa said:
But you are not writing the NAND cells, you are erasing the HPA which is invisible normally. It will wipe the tables that store which areas on the SSD are in use by the host system (i.e. have been previously written to). With this table erased, it would behave as a factory clean SSD.

Else the secure erase would take much longer if it has to write all NAND cells.
Click to expand...

Simply deleting the tables of where files are stored would not reset the drive. The slowdown comes from the fact that a physical limitation of NAND means that it can't be overwritten, but needs to be specifically erased and then rewritten. It doesn't have to write to each of the cells, but it does have to erase them, which is a separate instruction.
 
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