In order to be sure that a customer's data would be secured during a returns process for an SSD, Samsung is said to have recommended the customer take aggressive action and destroy the SSD before sending it back.
As a customer of Samsung's reports to Igor's Lab(opens in new tab) (via Tom's Hardware(opens in new tab)): while they were filing an RMA with Samsung because their SSD was faulty and showing signs of nearing death, there was some back and forth regarding the data on the drive and how super-duper secure it needed to be even in transit back to Samsung. The entire interaction was not published for privacy, but we have the final conclusion the two parties are said to have come to. That was to tell the customer they needed to destroy the drive before it was returned to them.
The customer was instructed by Samsung to take a hammer to their SSD or perhaps drill holes in it to ensure it's no longer in a fit state for any potential data thieves to take advantage of.
You see, Samsung required the drive to be returned to send over a new one, but not in one piece.
This was an exception to their customer support case, however, so don't do this before you've been given the green light to do so. You probably have to jump through a lot of hoops like this customer reportedly did to get any company to sign off on this sort of action. You'll need plenty of proof your SSD is broken, too.
Though if you do plan on drilling holes through your SSD to stop the feds from getting their hands on your bootlegged One Piece anthology, you want to make sure you get the memory chips themselves.
It's true that destroying the actual cells of your storage format is the most secure way to ensure no one is getting their hands on your data. While
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