I have a failing 4TB 870 Evo SSD. It has lasted less than a year (thanks Samsung). I believe the SSD has entered a read-only mode because it is failing. Any disk enumeration tasks take 30 seconds minimum (and up to a few minutes) if this drive is connected, and while I can recover almost all of my files via r-studio/WinHex, it no longer works properly.
I’d like to erase it before sending it in for RMA, as it was expensive ($470). If it wasn’t I’d just physically destroy it and take the loss. I could just send it in as-is but I don’t trust people not to snoop or scrape it for data they can use/sell. I’m also just annoyed that all my attempts to erase it have failed and now I’m determined to figure out a way.
Methods I have tried (not in order):
These seem to work but evidently are just silently failing every write (data is still readable after)
- dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M
- dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=64k
These actually report write errors on every sector
- shred -nv 1 /dev/sda
- badblocks
Other methods that have failed
- Windows format
- Samsung Magician Secure Erase bootable USB stick
- Encrypting the drive
- WinHex Wipe Securely
- DISKPART clean all (reports I/O device error)
- Secure Erase via hdparm (drive is not locked or frozen, reports bad/missing sense data)
hdparm –user-master u –security-set-pass p /dev/sda
hdparm –user-master u –security-erase p /dev/sda
Is there anyway at all to get around this write-lock “feature” and actually erase this drive, sans opening the case which would void the warranty? I’m assuming the write-lock is at the firmware level, are there tools that can temporarily disable it?
