Physical destruction. It’s the only way to be 100% sure.

Call the devices secure erase functionality.

here’s how to do it to sata and pata devices

I don’t do some of the checking and testing in that article, I just do —security-erase-enhanced and unless it fails it’s fine.

You could also encrypt the contents and delete the key.

For all average user requirements that just involve backups, PII docs, your sex vids, etc (e.g. not someone who could be persecuted, prosecuted, or murdered for their data) your best bet (other than physical destruction) is to encrypt every usable bit in the drive.

1. Download veracrypt
2. Format the SSD as exFAT
3. Create a new veracrypt volume on the mounted exFat partition that uses 100% of available space (any format).
4. open up a notepad and type out a long random ass throwaway password e.g. $-963,;@82??/@;!3?$.&$-,fysnvefeianbsTak62064$@/lsjgegelwidvwggagabanskhbwugVg, copy it, and close/delete without saving.
5. paste that password for the new veracrypt volume, and follow the prompts until it starts encrypting your SSD. It’ll take a while as it encrypts every available bit one-by-one.

Even if veracrypt hits a free space error at the end of the task, the job is done. Maybe not 100%, but 99.99+% of space on the SSD is overwritten with indecipherable gibberish. Maybe advanced forensics could recover some bits, but a) why the fuck would they go to that effort for a filthy commoner like yourself, and b) what are the chances that 0.01% of recoverable data contains anything useful!?! You don’t really need to bother destroying the header encryption key (as apple and android products do when you wipe a device) as you don’t know the password and there isn’t a chance in hell you or anyone else is gonna guess, nor brute force, it.

Are you considering using the drive afterwards? Because “toss it in a microwave for like 5 minutes” is always a valid answer if you’re not worried about reusing it.

This article covers several methods. Personally, I’d look for a BIOS based tool first, as that would be free and easiest. After that, the Diskpart Clean All command is probably fine for anything other than Top Secret data which a government based threat actor would be willing to put a lot of resources into recovering. If it’s just your tax documents and porn archive, no one is going to care enough to dig out anything which that command might have left behind.

NSA requires the use of a industrial shredder that can grind the components into pieces less than 2mm.

https://ameri-shred.com/portfolio-items/2mm-ssd-solid-state-drive-hammer-mills/

If you can’t do that, you should incinerate the drive at over 700 degrees.

As far as wiping goes, a 3 pass overwrite alternating 0s and 1s is good enough as long as it’s done over the entire drive, not just the partition.

BCWipe is good enough for this

• Secure erase using the drive OEMs tool.
• If you were using something like bitlocker then simply dump the key.
• Wood chipper or some other form of absolute physical destruction.

i know this isn’t what is being asked, but disk level encryption is cool

I hear thermite is good at destroying things.

Removed by mod

Smash it to pieces, melt it down into a blob and drop it down a borehole at the nearest quarry

If it’s really sensitive shit, you should beat the shit out of it with a sledgehammer and make sure you got all the nand modules(see diagram online), then throw parts of it into a large body of water, deeper the better

So many people here responding with outdated misinformation.

Microwave