With a hard drive, a hammer would have a similar effect, though you would want to make sure you damaged the actual platters, which is best done by drilling several holes in them. Of course, you must physically destroy the chips inside the SSD, so make sure they’ve been thoroughly smashed. Samsung probably doesn’t cover SSDs that come back in numerous small bits.

That’s quick, effective, and satisfying, but it does present a problem when trying to return the drive under warranty. The simplest way of ensuring that no one could ever read the data on an SSD is to don some eye protection and hit it repeatedly with a hammer. Do you want to prevent someone from recovering the files with off-the-shelf software? Are you concerned that a company like DriveSavers could extract the chips or attach new controllers? Do you worry about a government-level agency reconstructing the data? It’s also worth considering what you think “securely” should mean. Others may be perfect if you want to erase an SSD or hard drive securely but have different goals for the drive afterward. There are multiple answers to this question, but not all may be appropriate for a drive that’s being returned under warranty. Lucas043’s question: What’s the most secure way of erasing the drive? The SSD has intermittent access problems and is still under warranty, so it could be returned with no problem, but it contains sensitive client data. Lucas043 has a Samsung Portable T7 SSD being used for backup. Over on TidBITS Talk, user Lucas043 posed a question that prompted a fascinating discussion.

How to Securely Erase a Mac’s SSD or Hard Drive

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Hard drive eraser mac