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'Wipe' SSD before reinstalling Linux?
(slrpnk.net)
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Security … Depends. If you want to sell the SSD, then yes, wiping the SSD is advised. You don’t need complicated random multiple-write patterns. Just make sure to wipe everything (keywords: wear-leveling, cache), you could use
blkdiscard
for that.Performance-wise nothing noticeable would change. Physically, SSDs are fast enough to modify the charge traps to store the bits as needed to store files regardless of what’s in those traps (that’s quite a rabbit hole).
If you plan using the SSD for your own, you don’t need to wipe it, just repartition as needed and create the file systems in the partitions. What I do, is writing some data to the storage to destroy the partition table (
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/XYZ
whereXYZ
is my target device – and then leave it runninf for a few seconds).Since you’re using encryption, the common tools only see garbage and no data (i.e. file system). So simply don’t decrypt and work with the mapped partition but use the device directly.