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I know it is possible to wipe a hard disk, but I'm wondering if something similar can be done to SSD disks as well?

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Do you want to wipe it or are you wondering whether there is risk of it being accidentally erased? – James Sep 22 '11 at 14:25
I'm curious if it is possible – bbaja42 Sep 22 '11 at 14:31
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Actually it's really not that practical to reliably wipe a normal hard disk drive with a magnet unless you have some industrial grade magnets : pcworld.com/article/116572/busting_the_biggest_pc_myths.html. The article also mentions flash based storage: "A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells" - Bill Frank, executive director of the CompactFlash Association – James Sep 22 '11 at 14:49
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To securely wipe a flash drive, industrial shredders would be more practical than industrial magnets. – CarlF Sep 22 '11 at 14:57
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Flash memory uses floating gate transistors to store data, rather than the magnetic method used by hard disks. The presence of a magnetic field is not necessary a problem for an SSD, but the rate of change of magnetic flux could cause damage:

CFs [Compact Flash drives] aren't magnetic media, so they can't be erased like, say, a floppy disk or a hard drive. However, depending on the strength of the magnetic field, a CF isn't completely safe. For instance, if you were to do an MRI of your CF (or any other piece of sensitive electronic circuitry, for that matter), it would be toast. It's not simply the strength of the magnetic field that matters, so much as the rate at which the field changes. If you go from strong field to no field very quickly or vice versa, then the change in magnetic flux can generate small voltages over wires, traces, etc. If the voltages are high enough, then they can cause damage. I don't know, practically, in the real world, what sources of magnetic fields might pose a danger to a CF -- or a camera -- or a lens.

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I'd like to emphasize that this isn't a practical danger: you're not going to wreck your SSD drive by using your magnetic screwdriver, or even waving your singing monkey balls, near it (in fact, magnetic screwdrivers are pretty safe to use near normal magnetic hard-drives as well). – BlueRaja Sep 22 '11 at 16:26
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No. Flash memory is a silicon-based technology where traditional disk uses magnetized particles. I suggest the use for Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBaN)    

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Thanks, I should have been more clear that I'm just curious if such thing is possible. +1 for good alternative altough – bbaja42 Sep 22 '11 at 15:20
or dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb or whatever the block device is. – Rob Sep 22 '11 at 15:42
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