Talk:Solid state drive/Memory cell clearing

From ArchWiki

USB Enclosures

from the hdparm manual page:

hdparm provides a command line interface to various kernel interfaces supported by the Linux SATA/PATA/SAS "libata" subsystem and the older IDE driver subsystem. Many newer (2008 and later) USB drive enclosures now also support "SAT" (SCSI-ATA Command Translation) and therefore may also work with hdparm. Eg. recent WD "Passport" models and recent NexStar-3 enclosures. Some options may work correctly only with the latest kernels.

It may be possible to use SATA/USB interfaces for this purpose, but without a way to test whether or not a particular interface will support this, I'm reluctant to modify the article contents.

—This unsigned comment is by H f (talk) 05:12, 17 January 2018. Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

How to erase a USB only SSD?

Your article states:

Do not proceed with this if the target drive is not connected directly to a SATA/NVMe interface. Issuing the Secure Erase/Format/Sanitize command on a drive connected via USB or a SAS/RAID card could potentially brick the drive!

And indeed, this is also what https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase says.

But, but: there are some SSD drives that are only connected to a computer via USB. (so called external SSDs).

How to erase them?

(There are also external USB only HDDs, but in this case erasing is not an issue, simply overwrite them. But in case of SSHDs it gets complicated again...)

—This unsigned comment is by Kmph (talk) 16:08, 24 January 2021‎. Please sign your posts with ~~~~!