how to secure aerase the ssd in a Pavilion 15-cw1106ng

[Stefan1971HH]

Hello,

I'd like to apply "secure erase" to the integrated ssd. I can't find the option to do this in the BIOS though.

Is there a way to do this?

thanks

[WAWood]

@Stefan1971HH 

The PC is currently booting from the SSD -- so you can't Secure Erase an SSD that is in use.

Furthermore, you need the manufacturers software to do this -- so you have to find out the brand of the SSD and download their service utility.

Then, you have to connect the SSD to another PC and do the following:

1) remove all the partitions from the SSD

2) install the manufacturer's service utility

3) run that service utility and select the option to Secure Erase

[Stefan1971HH]

@WAWood , thanks, but why isn't there the "secure erase" option in the bios (I found HP

documents stating that this is the casre for computers built 2011 or later)?

I probably have to do it from another PC as you suggested. I was hoping that there might

a way to apply secure erase (or something equivalent) from a bootable usb stick at

this laptop, but it seems the ssd's manufacturer (Intel) doesn't offer this.

[WAWood]

@Stefan1971HH 

I understand your question -- but HP does not share BIOS information with us, so I have no idea why it was omitted.

[halozene]

I have the same issue on a 3yr old Pavilion 15 cw0xxx laptop, and read the same HP documentation, which is incorrect.  I'm selling this machine and want to ensure the SSD is completely wiped first.

The BIOS is the Aptio Setup Utility by AMI, rather than an HP BIOS and there isn't any Secure Erase feature built in.

The drive is a Samsung NVME, I tried the Samsung Magician software, but it says the SSD is unsupported. After a bit of digging I read that the Magician software only supports Samsung retail branded drives, and not OEM versions - so in this case it's useless.

I think it's abysmal that HP are selling machines that consumers can't easily easily wipe in an age of digital security. Looks like I'll be going down the bootable Linux image route and going command-line.

[Stefan1971HH]

Hey everyone, I finally managed to apply "secure erase" with a bootable version of "Parted Magic". Had to buy it though, because the old free verions apparently can't deal with NVMe SSDs.

[WAWood]

@Stefan1971HH 

Glad to see you got it accomplished -- but you might have been able to do this for free if you had been able to find and download the manufacturer's SSD utilities.  I have these for all my different SSDs and all of them were free.