Secure Erase not in Bios

[heaaat]

Hello.

I have the following Issue:

I want to Erase the SSD of my HP Spectre 360 safely because I want to sell my HP Spectre and there should not remain any private Data at the SSD. Following that manual ( https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c06204100 ) there is ja secure erase function in Bios for HP Laptopts starting with 2011. Well, my Laptop is from 2016 and I cant find that option in my Bios. Does that option exist for the HP Spectre X360? Is there an alternative? I tried Parted Magic but that program can't find the SSD.

Thank you very much!

BR Simon

[WAWood]

@heaaat 

I've not done an SSD secure erase from BIOS, but I have done it to several SSDs using the utilities supplied by the SSD vendors -- and they always have the same limitations.  First, there can be no partitions on the SSD.  This means you have to remove all the partitions.  Second, the SSD can not be in use.  This means you can't be running Windows from it.

That means in the case of the Spectre, you can't boot from the SSD and do a secure erase because it is in use.

When I've done this myself, I've connected the SSD to a desktop PC and ran the secure erase from that PC.

I don't know how you are going to do this from the Spectre unless you can remove the SSD and do the same.

[heaaat]

Theoretically there is the option to erase also the SSD with Windows by using a self booting USB Stick. I prepared that stick with the program Parted Magic and it works. I can boot with Parted Magic as operating system. Unfortunately the program didn't find the SSD. The second alternative is to create a booting USB Stick with Samsung Magician. Unfortunately the program doesn't support my 4 years old SSD from Samsung. Removing the SSD from the Spectre is not an option for me, because it's not so easy dissasembling the Spectre (thanks HP!). Thats why i search now for an alternative from HP to Secure Erase that SSD. Especially they are publishing an information that there is an Bios option to do that.