Cryptographic EraseBasically, a cryptographic erase means encrypting the drive, then throwing a way the encryption key. And that’s called a “cryptographic erase.”Selling your SSD Mac? Cryptographic erasure is a great option. The SSD Erasure IssueThe very best description of the difficulty conventional tools have in completely erasing an SSD comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.) The article is: “ How to: Delete Your Data Securely on Mac OS X.” Skip to the very last major section labeled: “Secure Deletion on Solid-state Disks (SSDs), USB Flash Drives, and SD Cards.” It’s a long paragraph, but the language is simple as it describes how SSD “ wear leveling” undermines the best efforts of erasure tools to completely overwrite SSD data.As a result of how SSDs write data, the best practice today involves going one step beyond the simple process of using Apple’s Disk Utility “standard erase” for an SSD.If you haven’t already, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault and enable it. Back up any data you want to keep on your boot drive. “ How to Securely Erase a Mac SSD.” In brief: (This what happens when you do a master reset on your iOS device.) Then the SSD is erased and formatted as usual.If someone were to examine the unused space on the newly erased drive with a digital forensic tool, all that would be seen is encrypted nonsense.For an Mac’s boot drive, Peter Cohen explains the process nicely.
Prepare Your For Sale Mac OS XYou may wish to install some version of macOS now to place the machine in the out-of-the-box mode. The SSD now contains only unreadable, encrypted garbage. This deletes the FileVault key. Now erase the disk normally, using the standard erase option. Back up any data you want to preserve that’s on on the external Flash drive or SSD. See Apple’s support document, “ Encrypt and protect a disk with a password.” The process is slightly different. Erasing an External SSDYou may want to securely erase an external Flash drive before selling or discarding. Staples serial to usb adapter driverI’ve found that it’s always helpful to read more for a broder perspective and sanity check. Final ThoughtsThis is a summary of what I’ve learned. Launch Disk Utility, select the drive, then select the Erase option.The drive is now empty, newly formatted and all the previous data is leftover, encrypted garbage. “ How to Securely Erase Data from Your Mac and External Drives.
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