A couple years ago, we achieved a third-party validation for the sanitize process on our M600 Client SATA SSD. Now, we have repeated this validation with our latest Client SATA SSD, the 1100, our most advanced 3D NAND-based client SSD. We contracted with the experts at KrollOntrack to validate that when you use the Sanitize Drive function in our Storage Executive software, you will successfully eliminate all of the user and system data on your SSD.
This may seem like a bit of trivia, but for applications where the stored data carries significant value and must be protected because the data is proprietary, private, or is literally Top Secret, this sanitization process can be critically important. And, unfortunately, the process of sanitizing SSDs carries some historical baggage, which is worth re-visiting.
In 2011, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) released a study which reported that many solid state, NAND FLASH devices failed to completely erase the media when “secure erase” commands were executed. That some products existed at the time which actually did fail this operation is beyond doubt, but we know that Micron SSDs were not among them. That said, to my opinion, the true takeaway from the study is that data sanitization methods which were tried-and-true with HDDs were often very ineffective with SSDs.