[chx]

> We all have SSDs in our laptops now. These are hard to wipe

Not at all if you have an OPAL SSD which are quite common these days. These have a key which encrypts the data at rest and a user facing passphrase which decrypts this key. If you override the encrypting key, the rest of the data is gone unless you can break AES.

[bj-rn]

You can also do "Memory Cell Clearing" by using Secure Erase (SATA) or Sanitize (NVMe)[1]. Parted Magic provides a simple GUI for these operations [2]/[3].

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Solid_state_drive/Memory_ce... [2] https://partedmagic.com/secure-erase/ [3] https://partedmagic.com/nvme-secure-erase/

[Nextgrid]

This assumes the SSD properly implements AES. I wouldn't trust it and prefer using OS-level full disk encryption.

[chx]

Obviously such trust could be misplaced but you will find a lot of very large organizations trust the OPAL SSDs shipped by Lenovo/HP/Dell.

[8note]

What happens when you delete data?

[brokenmachine]

Probably just like a hard drive, just removes the file's entry from the file allocation table.