A Solid State Drive (SSD) has many advantages over a traditionally spinning hard drives with moving parts. It’s faster, sleeker, lasts longer and generally is easier to maintain. Did I mention it’s faster? There might be one little thing, however, that some owners may neglect. That’s the firmware.
Since Windows 10 has been launched, a number of manufacturers have rolled out updates to their SSD firmware’s. But non-tech owners have been blissfully unaware, because unlike the apps on your smartphone, these aren’t upgraded automatically unless you have the right tools installed.
Why Bother With Firmware
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The firmware of SSDs is essential for running them smoothly and efficiently. Sometimes, manufacturers are alerted about issues only after the product has been sold to customers and sometimes it is a newer version of Windows, which may cause some issues.
In any case, it’s best to stay updated with SSD firmware, especially if it’s a high-performance one which you rely on 100%.
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Find Out SSD Models
The first and obvious step is to find out if you have an SSD or not. If so, then by which manufacturer. If you already know all this, skip this section. If not, go to the search box on your taskbar and type defrag and you will see the below option.
Clicking on it will open the Optimize Drives window and here you will see how many of your drives are SSDs and HDDs. Again, if you find that none of your drives are SSDs, stop reading and go Netflix and Chill. If there is even one drive which is an SSD, then find out which model it is.
The best way to find that out is by going to the My Computer screen and right-clicking the drive you found was the SSD. It was the C: drive in my case, so I will right-click that and then click Properties. From here, click on the Hardware tab and the name of the SSD maker will be revealed.
OEM Tools Only
Once you know who’s made the SSD running on your PC, it’s easier to sort things out. Each SSD maker, be it Intel or Samsung or Kingston or OCZ, has some sort of utility which will have the option to upgrade firmware. Let’s take my case, where I found that I had an Intel SSD. A simple Google search later, I found the Intel SSD Toolbox page, downloading and installing it was easy.
Once I launched it, there was a nice layout with each tab clearly highlighting what it does. Clicking on Upgrade Firmware revealed I was on an older version and the software automatically downloaded and installed the latest one for me. A reboot later, my SSD was now running the latest firmware and I can now rest easy.
Similarly, Samsung has its own utilities, Corsair its own, SanDisk its own as does Crucial and so does OCZ.
Some, like Kingston and OWC, offer SandForce-based client which is ok but don’t offer anything extra. You could try a 3rd party tool like SSD Tweaker for this, but only as a last resort.
Don’t Lax, Upgrade Now
Remember how much you had to save up for your precious SSD? Then why be careless and let a little old thing like outdated firmware corrupt it? Upgrade now. It ain’t that hard.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
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Secure drive erasure is the process of erasing all or part of a storage device so that the data it contained is difficult or impossible to recover. Standard methods of secure drive erasure do not work with solid-state drives (SSDs); for alternative methods, see below.
Securely erase a solid-state drive
To securely erase data, hard disk drives fill the occupied space on the drive with a file consisting of zeroes or execute multiple writes of different characters; for more, see Securely wipe disk drives. However, solid-state drives use wear-leveling algorithms that evenly distribute data among SSD blocks, which means that data is constantly moved around on the drive so the blocks will be worn at an equal rate. Standard secure deletion tools damage SSDs by performing an unnecessary number of additional writes without being able to tell where the data is written.
Liteon Ssd Diagnostic Software
To securely erase data from a solid-state drive, use one of the following methods:
Liteon Ssd Drive Utility
- Manufacturer-specific software
If possible, use software provided by the manufacturer of the drive to erase an SSD. Many manufacturers offer software that allows for securely erasing the drive, as well as other functions such as updating firmware or checking the health of the drive. Use the instructions provided by the manufacturer to erase the SSD.
The following manufacturers provide software to securely erase an SSD:
If you cannot locate the manufacturer of your SSD, or if the manufacturer does not provide software for securely erasing the drive, you can try using a generic utility:
- Encryption
Many recently introduced SSDs encrypt data by default. In such cases, you may be able to quickly sanitize the device by deleting the encryption key, which renders the data on the drive irretrievable. Contact the drive manufacturer to see if this option is available and enabled.
- Physical destruction
If the above methods fail and the data absolutely must be made irretrievable, physically destroy the drive.
Verify that the drive has been securely erased
Liteon Ssd Toolbox Download
Use data recovery software to verify that the SSD no longer contains data. A number of data recovery software packages are available, ranging from freeware to commercial software products. PartedMagic and GParted (listed above) include recovery options.