Whether for slowed performance or some other issue that’s crept up, sometimes securely erasing your SSD is the solution needed. While there are a number of ways to get the deed done, most solutions are hit-or-miss, and are generally not that elegant. In my personal experience, the easiest way to secure erase a drive is through Linux, and as the title of this article suggests, that’s exactly the route we’re taking here. The best part? You don’t need to understand Linux to follow this guide.

First things first: if you don’t already have a version of Linux installed, you’ll need to download a distro and create a bootable CD-ROM or flash drive. If your intention is to only secure erase an SSD, it’s recommended you download Parted Magic, a distro designed around managing storage. If you’d rather have a bootable Linux environment that’s setup like a real desktop, then another distro can be used, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. For this article, I’m using Linux Deepin, in addition to Parted Magic.