Tails

Tails is very good as a disk formatting/secure erase tool. The current version of Tails includes hdparm and gnome-disks by default, and as a result, users can easily perform ATA secure erase command on their internal HDDs and SATA SSDs. Although there are other formatting tools that can perform the same tasks, like Parted Magic and GParted, I personally think Tails is better at the job because it’s lightweight, free, and compatible with many hardwares.

And, using and even advertising Tails as a disk formatting utility have a potential to provide cover to dissidents who have to use Tails for secure, private communication. Currently, because Tails is only marketed as a privacy and government-avoiding tool, using Tails or even connecting to tails.boum.org via home Internet can look suspicious to friends, local network administrators (e.g., schools), and government officials (think of NSA’s XKeyscore program). If many people use Tails as a formatting utility, using Tails will look less suspicious.

However, neither hdparm nor the current version of gnome-disks support secure-erasing internal NVMe SSDs. Because more and more PCs nowadays have NVMe SSDs, this somewhat undermines Tails’ ability to format any PCs that a user might encounter. Including nvme-cli by default might resolve this.