This issue concerns Samsung NVMe PM951 512gb drives and Blancco Drive Eraser 6.x version(s). The PM951 is known to be found for example in Dell Latitude E7270, Dell Dimension/Precision 5510 and Dell XPS series laptops.
It is possible that the Blancco SSD Erasure - NVMe or NIST 800-88 Purge erasure fails with the following message: "FORMAT UNIT command failed. Device is NVMe, see manual for more information". In this case Blancco Drive Eraser is not able to run the 'format unit' firmware erasure command on the drive successfully. This is caused by a freeze lock on the drive that Blancco is not automatically detecting. The freeze lock blocks the erasure command from executing successfully.
The fix for this issue is to force the Freeze Lock Removal process in Blancco Drive Eraser, by using a customized startup option. This can be done either by using the Blancco Drive Eraser Configuration tool, or manually configuring a customized startup parameter at boot time. Both options are explained below.
Option 1. Configuring Forced FLR using the Drive Eraser Configuration Tool.
- The latest DECT can be found here:
- Run the DECT and load the Blancco Drive Eraser ISO image that you want to configure.
- Go to the OS tab and select Customized startup in Boot options.
- Check the 'flr' checkbox and select 'forced' in the dropdown menu.
- Click 'Save as' to save the new ISO image configuration.
