It should be noted that almost all drive makers have secure erase or sanitize utilities for their drives. Here are links to common brands. If you have a drive from another brand, check their website. Corsair SSD Toolbox Crucial Storage Executive Intel Solid State Toolbox OCZ/Toshiba SSD Utility Samsung Magician Software SanDisk Crypto Erase Tool One of the best 3rd party applications is Parted Magic. While it is not free, it only costs $9. For more information, see SAFE – Scramble And Finally Erase, white paper SAFE: Fast, Verifiable Sanitization for SSDs.
Don't for get that formatting is not the same as erasing, something this article forgets to mention explicitly. ATA provides a standard secure erase command "SECURITY ERASE PREPARE" which is reliable for any directly connected device on supported controllers. The Linux tool hdparm supports running this command. Its best (not foolproof) way o erase all blocks on a device (even if not accessible by the OS, such as hidden/mapped blocks, block stored in intermediate caches etc). There is no better method through the standard SATA interface (note hardware manufacturers tools can use non-standard commands and potential do a better job).
Apply full disk encryption prior to handling sensitive data. If the data is never written to disk in plain form, you're less dependent on SSD sanitization.
Huh? Does that question really make any sense? Did you notice where you link goes? Did you check it out?
About SSD I always read that wipe the data is unnecessary and unsafe, see i.e. http://www.howtogeek.com/165472/6-things-you-shouldnt-do-with-solid-state-drives/ : am I wrong ?
Why do you say that? OCZ is owned by Toshiba. That site shows both OCZ and Toshiba logos on the same SSDs. There may be some (probably older) types of SSDs that may not be supported by this utility, but to say it does not support this brand or that brand is incorrect. The fact is, Toshiba makes OCZ SSDs using Toshiba manufactured TLC NAND flash memory devices. See this. It would be like Sony saying they do not support Sony VAIO, or VW does not support the VW Golf. It is not that wiping SSDs is "unsafe" as in "harmful". It is that it is unnecessary and not very effective. As the How-To Geek noted, when you delete a file from an SSD, it is deleted and unrecoverable. This means all you have to do is make sure you have deleted all your files and they will not be recoverable by a bad guy, no matter how hard he tries. That is why using a wipe program on a SSD is "unnecessary". That is different from a hard drive where the file is not actually deleted; the space it once used is just marked as available so it can be over written (or recovered). Also, because hard drives work by orienting magnetic particles on the disk in such a way as to represent 1s and 0s, it is possible for residual magnetism to remain in those locations that leave the potential for data recovery. SSDs devices use transistor "gates". They are called gates because they are either open (0s) or closed (1s). Think of a switch on a train track. When the switch is closed, the train (electrical current) can go through it (1s). When the switch is open, they train cannot (0s). When you delete a file on a SSD, you "flip" each gate back to its "quiescent state" - it no longer represents any data. Each gate is a bit, you need 8 to make a byte. 8 bits that don't represent data are useless to the bad guy. When you wipe a hard drive, you are not really "wiping" or erasing anything. You are just writing a bunch of random 1s and 0s in every storage location (each bit) to obliterate any residual magnetic charges representing the previous 1s and 0s that made up the previously saved data. Every storage location on a SSD memory device supports a limited number of writes. Though that limit is much higher than any normal home user needs to worry about (especially with each newer generation of SSDs), to ensure those limits are never reached, "wear leveling" occurs to spread the load through out the SSD so no one location is used more than another. This feature is what defeats a traditional wipe program - the random 1s and 0s are spread out based on wear leveling needs. This means some spots may miss being wiped. So in that respect, it is "unsafe" in that some of your personal data may not be overwritten as it would on a hard drive, and may be recovered (unless you deleted it earlier). Clear as mud, huh?
OK, I see. So you're saying that normally it should work, perhaps I blocked something, will try again.
