For more security, consider turning on FileVault encryption when you start using your SSD drive.Īpple’s terse recommendation requires you to read between the lines or know about cryptographic sanitization of data and read up on FIPS / etc. Note: With a solid-state drive (SSD), secure erase options are not available in Disk Utility. When you shred the encryption keys - the data is cryptographically erased instantly. The proper / official / thorough way to sanitize an Apple SSD is to enable FileVault before you copy any data to it. I'm currently just doing it the old-school way with shred which writes random data to the drive but obviously this isn't ideal as it's slow and shortens the live of the drive, so I'd love to know the proper method to use in the future. I also bought Parted Magic which claims to be able to secure-erase NVME drives and unfortunately that fails as well.

I've tried multiple permutations of the command and options, including targeting the raw NVME controller /dev/nvme0 or one of its namespaces instead /dev/nvme0n1, different parameters to the -s option, etc. I found a Linux utility called nvme-cli but even with its format option it fails with an error INVALID_OPCODE(1) (looks like the NVME controller rejects the command). With the new NVME drive this does not work. With a conventional SATA drive I'd use the 'ATA Secure Erase' command which can be sent from a Linux environment using the hdparm utility.

I just got one of the new 12-inch MacBooks and would like to wipe the storage drive.

How to securely erase mac