Worried your data could fall into the wrong hands? A company has developed an M.2 SSD storage drive that can self-destruct by frying its own memory.
The product, the P250Q Self-Destruct SSD, is engineered to instantly wipe its memory at the push of a button —either through a software-based erasure or a hardware method that’s supposed to physically destroy the flash chip.
The product comes from the Taiwanese memory vendor Team Group, which is marketing the SSD to customers working in sensitive industries, including defense, factory automation and AI development.
(Team Group)
“The P250Q is equipped with a patented independent destruction circuit that enables precise data erasure at the hardware level by directly targeting the Flash IC (integrated circuit),” the vendor says.
The company initially introduced the P250Q for Taiwan’s Computex show before launching the product on Friday. Of course, users can destroy an M.2 SSD the old fashioned way by physically breaking it or throwing it into a fire. Still, Team Group’s method promises to be efficient in the event your home or office is facing a raid.
In a video simulating the self-destruct mechanism, Team Group showed the SSD can be installed on a PC motherboard. Customers can then choose between the software-based or the hardware-based self-erasure, which “uses high voltage breakdown technology to physically destroy NAND Flash, ensuring data is irrecoverable.”
In the video, the company demos the hardware-based self-destruct, which takes 10 seconds and causes the SSD to apparently emit smoke, permanently destroying the flash memory. An LED light on the product also flashes, confirming the erasure is occurring.
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How the self-destruct mechanism actually appears to users is less clear. Team Group also hasn’t revealed the product’s cost. Instead, it’s asking interested customers to contact the company.
“The P250Q adopts a PCIe Gen4x4 interface and complies with the NVMe 1.4 protocol, delivering read speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 5,500 MB/s to support data processing under mission-critical workloads,” Team Group added.
Buyers can also tap the software-based quick erase function, ensuring they can re-use the SSD again. Team Group says the software-based method features “an auto-resume function that ensures data destruction continues seamlessly after an unexpected power outage, guaranteeing the complete elimination of sensitive information.”
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
