In fact, it is recommended (read that to mean highly advised) that you don't do a secure erase because you would be shortening the life expectancy of your SSD due to the increased write operations. This is not the case with an SSD nothing is magnetized. This is how COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) utilities like Disk Drill software is able to reconstruct a drive. The reason you needed multiple passes or even the DoD 7 pass secure erase was because with traditional hard drives (HDDs) the data was stored on magnetic platters which left a residual magnetic imprint even when wiped. You don't need to do a secure erase of an SSD because a a standard erase is already more than enough to secure your data. Note: Level 2, 3, or 4 secure erases can take an extremely long time. Ownership of the affected disk is required. Securely erases either a whole disk or a volume's freespace.ģ - Gutmann algorithm 35-pass secure erase. Usage: diskutil secureErase level MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode

You can get a list of the options available to you by issuing the command without any options: $ diskutil secureErase Will erase your disk, identified by X, with a single pass of zeros.

The following command diskutil secureErase 0 /dev/diskX