ATA/SATA Secure Erase Command

This is a special ATA/SATA command sent to a drive to tell it to erase itself securely. There are other ways of erasing media as well, such as degaussing, and using the OS to write zeros or random data to it, but this is the preferred method, because it also erases reserved areas of the disk that the OS cannot access.

More information on the ATA secure erase command can be found at https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase