First, what is SECURE ERASE?
The actual name of these commands is SECURITY ERASE, not SECURE ERASE. We’ll just call it SE from now on. The SE commands were developed as a method for an ATA/SATA disk drive to erase all data on itself. This functionality is built into the firmware of virtually all ATA and SATA drives manufactured since the early 2000’s. It is a government agency approved method of purging all data from a disk drive.
There are two levels of SE – Normal and Enhanced, with the enhanced level being an option that may or may not be implemented on any particular drive.
This table from the T13 ATA/ATAPI Command Set 4 documentation shows the differences –
Drives that implement SE will report:
- If they support SE or not
- If they support SE Enhanced Mode or not
- An estimate of how long a normal and an enhanced SE will take to complete
Does the STB Suite have a SE function?
Yes, as of version 9.0 the STB Suite has the ability to run a SE on either individual drives or on multiple drives simultaneously.
You can watch videos showing how to run a SATA SE from the Single Drive (Orginal Mode) and the Multi-Drive (DMM) from our Virtual Training Center here:https://stbsuite.com/support/virtual-training-center