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Difficulty: EasyData Destruction and Disposal Methods

A technician needs to sanitize several solid-state drives (SSDs) containing sensitive company data. The drives must remain functional so they can be reassigned to non-sensitive workstations. Which of the following data sanitization methods should the technician perform?

  1. Perform an ATA Secure Erase or cryptographic erasure on the drives.Answer
  2. B
    Pass the solid-state drives through a commercial degaussing coil.
  3. C
    Perform a standard high-level OS format on each drive volume.
  4. D
    Delete all existing volume partitions using Disk Management.

Answer

An ATA Secure Erase or cryptographic erasure should be performed on the solid-state drives.
Applying an ATA Secure Erase command or cryptographic erasure purges the contents of flash memory cells or destroys the cryptographic keys protecting the drive, ensuring the data is permanently unrecoverable while preserving the hardware for redeployment.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the media type and operational requirements.
The target devices are solid-state drives (SSDs) that must be preserved for reuse rather than physically destroyed.
Flash-based storage requires software-based sanitization techniques specifically designed for non-magnetic media.
2
Select a sanitization method compatible with flash storage reuse.
ATA Secure Erase or cryptographic erasure purges all stored data without damaging the underlying drive components.
Degaussing fails on solid-state media, and basic OS formatting leaves raw data readable by forensic utilities.

Key Concept

Sanitization Methods for Solid-State Storage
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Topics

Data Destruction and Disposal Methods

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