this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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The idea is that
blkdiscard
will tell the SSD's own controller to zero out everything. The controller can actually access all blocks regardless of what it exposes to your OS. But will it do it? Who knows?After reading all of this I would just do both... Each method fails in different ways so their sum might be better than either in isolation.
But the actual solution is to always encrypt all of your storage. Then you don't have to worry about this mess.
Just to be clear,
blkdiscard
alone does not zero out anything; it just marks blocks as empty.--secure
tells compatible drives to additionally wipe the blocks;-z
actually zeros out the contents in the blocks likedd
does. The difference is that - without the secure or z options - the data is still in the cells.Yes! Although, I don't think hindsight is helpful for OP.