SSDs store data in blocks rather than in sectors as with magnetic storage. With SSDs, the erased file situation is even more complex. As long as the operating system does not reuse the space occupied by a file with another file, the 'deleted' file can be recovered. However, the file could be recovered days or even weeks later with third-party data recovery software. If you use Shift-Delete to bypass the Recycle Bin, the space occupied by the file is marked as available for other files. If you use the normal Windows delete function, the 'deleted' file is sent to the Recycle Bin until the space it uses is required by other files. When you erase/delete a file from your computer, it's not really gone until the areas of the disk it used are overwritten by new information. If you have a BIOS password as well, you will also need to reset too.Sure, you could erase the contents of the drive, but keep this in mind: the act of erasing a file does not remove it from a storage device. Safeguard is a product made by Sophos, so to remove all aspects of it from the disk, you will need to wipe the disk entirely (as I mentioned above). If the protection is more sophisticated, such as using encryption or password protection applied BY the disk but controlled by either the BIOS or third party application, then a new hard drive may be your only solution if you can't get the password. There are many ways to do this, personally I would use a linux machine to write 00 to every location on the disk - but there are some windows applications that will do the same thing. If the drive is encrypted/protected using external software, you will need to completely wipe the disk. Some BIOSs used to have a backdoor to by-pass that (which made it pretty useless) or you you could open up the laptop and clear the CMOS memory which holds the password.

If you still get a password request, it is a BIOS function. To see if it is drive encryption/password, power up the machine without the hard drive installed. Neither will reformatting help if the password is a BIOS function, although that doesn't usually provide encryption. If it is drive encryption, reformatting the drive will not solve the problem as all reformatting does is reset the Master File Tables.

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