Does Eraser support the "secure erase" command?

[Tapioca]

I was wondering if Eraser supports the "secure erase" command built into hard drive firmware. From what I've read this is even more secure than erasing data blocks and much quicker since it generates a new encryption key for the hard drive, or something like that. I guess this is the way you're supposed to erase flash based media too.

I know HDDerase used the command but it is no longer being developed. If it isn't supported in Eraser yet, is there any plans to include it?

 

[DavidHB]

The answer to your question, as far as I am aware, is that Eraser works entirely at the file system level. I'll leave Joel to respond as to whether working with the drive at a lower level is practicable or desirable. I could imagine that the tiny Eraser team would not be too keen to support any process that is manufacturer-specific; the overhead might be too great to be sustainable.

The issue with flash media is the wear-levelling mechanism; defeating that, even if possible, could very readily damage the drive. On flash drives, as I understand it, file and folder erasing does not work (the erase is redirected to the wrong place by the wear levelling mechanism), but free space erasing, which fills the whole drive, does work.

David

 

[Joel]

I was actually looking around for this, but my preliminary research showed that the ability to use this ATA command would be to lock the drive (at the firmware level.) I don't think that at this stage Windows will allow that (short of writing a kernel-mode driver) so I'd put this on the back burner for a while. If you have leads, let me know, I'll see what can be done.