Is partial secure erase of sections of SDD feasabile?

[tatermacandcheese]

I have been using an eraser program and was dissatisfied with the performance and while looking to find another product I came across this blurbage on another vendors site saying the very thing I thought these programs would do, they cannot. I am NOT speaking of FULL DRIVE SECURE ERASE, only those areas of the drive that show where you traveled thru the vast internet, IE your browsing history etc.
So am am wondering if the programs that promise to erase theses traces are really not doing what you think they are doing when you lay out the cash and happily, (ignorantly) install and use one.

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" Harry's Erase software" effectively prevent all logical (keyboard) attacks against Solid-State Drives and make data recovery impossible while the Solid-State Drives are in use in live environments.

If the SSD is physically removed from the machine and placed in a laboratory for professional data recovery, where the NAND chips can be accessed directly, data may be recoverable.
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I thought these programs would do just that, make data recovery impossible in those areas scrubbed by the program, but it seems that unless you secure erase the whole drive you are just kidding yourself.

Any thoughts? A waste of money?

Moral, legal or ethical considerations aside, of why one wants/needs a program like this, like keeping the better half from discovering your porn habits....

Thx !

 

[pattyandme]

I known software to be able to read and write to sectors bypassing any code written for security in windows or any other software security.
if the software were loaded into a virtual hard drive and than within its own operating system ( dos ) for instance is what I've used in the past. read and wrote to the hard drive by sector . It's as reading a grid top to bottom rather than left to right and selecting what ever grid data you wanted and deleting it . Finding the data you wanted deleted can be an issue if having to read the entire drive to find it all. to know what to delete.
it's old software I used to create recovery partitions and save them had other tools , one was it was able to read and write to the disk sector blocks. read compressed disk drive files ( windows new format at the time) .

so I would say yes it can be done.

 

[ubuysa]

The garbage collection (TRIM) and wear-levelling algorithms in SSDs operate at the drive level and are thus invisible to Windows and all application that run on Windows. This means that you can securely delete files on an SSD from Windows (or from tools running on Windows) and yet, because data isn't actually removed from the SSD blocks until TRIM runs and may also be moved to different blocks due to wear-levelling algorithms, I don't believe that there are any Windows based tools that can guarantee removal of SSD data without overwriting every block on the drive.

 

[davehc]

About every fortnight, I do it manually. First I open the unhide the "hidden" folders. in The explorer" Then I use the disk clean up built in to Windows, including the option to clear redundant system files. I then browse through explorer and delete the contents of any temp or temp internet folders. Usually gets rid of quite a few mbs or, in extreme cases Gbs

Done it for years and it has never let me down.

When I am satisfied I still have an intact and working OS rolleyes I hide everything again and make a macrium backup. The final difference in overall size is quite significant.
Maybe to much bother, but I enjoy it.

 

[pattyandme]

install everything from an image after formatting the drive . its a time issue for myself.

 

[davehc]

I only have a small amount of third party software installed. Restoring the image normally takes 8 minutes

 

[ubuysa]

I only have a small amount of third party software installed. Restoring the image normally takes 8 minutes

Same here (using Macrium Reflect).