Blancco Drive Eraser 6.1.0 - Release notes

Features:

  • NVMe SSDs erasure.
    • Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is a logical device interface specification for accessing non-volatile storage media attached via a PCI Express (PCIe) bus. NVMe data storage drives are becoming popular on high-end machines (laptops, tablets and servers) and will soon start replacing SATA SSDs thanks to their small sizes and increased performances (from 2 to 10 times faster than SATA SSDs). These sophisticated and fast devices can now be detected, securely erased and reported with Blancco Drive Eraser 6.1.
    • NVMe can be securely erased with "Blancco SSD Erasure" and "NIST 800-88 Purge" standards. Blancco recommends to use the former method if you wish to purge an NVMe drive. Some issues can arise when erasing NVMe drives (check the "Known issues" section).
  • Full 64-bit architecture.
    • After moving the kernel to 64-bit, now all the Blancco Drive Eraser libraries (backend, UI, etc.) are also 64-bit, thus achieving a full 64-bit architecture.
    • Applies to 64-bit images only. This will result in a more stable software on machines with lots of RAM, as all libraries will be capable of using more than 4 GB of RAM.

Bug fixes / Improvements:

  • The booting animation is now back in Blancco Drive Eraser. This animation is a good indication for users that the booting process is ongoing and is not frozen. Available with the booting options "Normal startup (safe resolution)", "Normal startup (native resolution)", "FLR at startup".
  • Fix for a problem where NVMe drives where not detected (e.g. on Microsoft Surface Pro 4, Apple Macbook A1534, etc.). The "NVMe SSD erasure" feature includes detection and erasure for NVMe drives (not detected in earlier releases).
  • Fix for a problem where two hybrid drives (Toshiba MQ02ABD100H - 1TB and Toshiba MQ02ABF050H - 500GB) where detected as SSDs. Adding these 2 models in the list of known hybrid drives.
  • Fix for a problem where a normal drive (Seagate ST500LM021) was detected as a hybrid drive. Removing this model from the list of known hybrid drives.
  • Fix for a problem where the HASP dongle was not detected by the Blancco hardware appliance. Occurred in some hardware appliance models only.
  • Fix for a problem where the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 keyboard and touchpad were not functional.
  • Fix for a problem where the erasure of large SAS SSD drives with "Blancco SSD Erasure" hanged at 17%. Occurred with some SAS drives having a special formatting.
  • Fix for a problem where large numeric values in the XML report broke the MC communication (report could not be sent). MC cannot accept such large numeric values, therefore the report is not accepted and the sending fails. The fix: whenever Drive Eraser detects a large (abnormal) numeric value in the XML report, the whole tag/line is removed (the value is anyway bad and should not be stored in the MC).
  • Fix for a problem where the MC/Cloud communication would not work in case there was an empty/undefined license container for traditional erasure licenses. This covers a case where a customer is delivered e.g. asset licenses or licenses to erase special drives without licenses for traditional erasures.
  • Fix for a problem where the UI kept swapping from the mouse cursor to the hourglass, making any interaction with the software pretty difficult. The problem originated from a failing MC communication due to a missing license container. Drive Eraser catches now the error which does not bother the UI anymore.
  • Fix for a problem where Blancco 5/Drive Eraser consumed two DHCP leases. The software used on occasions two separate IP-addresses per network interface.
  • Fix for a problem where, after a successful firmware-based erasure, the report stated "HPA area content could not be erased" when in reality it was erased. In this case, the wrong message "HPA area content could not be erased" has been replaced with the correct "HPA area content was erased".
  • Fix for a problem where the erasure of SATA drives connected to LSI MegaRAID SAS 8708EM2 / 1078 controllers hanged at 0%.

Known Issues:

  • During the erasure, NVMe drives that have a poor heat dissipation can see their temperature rise and their performances drop.
    • This is called "thermal throttling", the device itself drops its performances in order to maintain or reduce the heat. Drive Eraser fetches and displays the NVMe temperature and shows a warning tooltip under the drive if the temperature is close to its Critical Composite Temperature Threshold, also the screensaver will blink with a yellow "!" mark.
    • What can be done to prevent this from happening?
      • Pause the erasure and resume it once the temperature has reached an acceptable level.
      • Consider applying an external heat dissipation.
  • Some Apple MacBook machines with NVMe (e.g. MacBook8,1 with NVMe) cannot be erased at all. The NVMe is detected fine but all the commands we send fail. We suspect that these drives have some sort of hardware/software lock. Investigation continues.
  • The hotplug feature does not work on NVMe drives. This will be added in a future release.
  • The partition detection/erasure does not work on NVMe drives. This will be added in a future release.


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