We all know deleting files from your PC doesn’t really mean they’re gone forever. Whether it’s your average tech support person or a forensic wizard, your “deleted” data often lingers, waiting to be recovered. Enter TeamGroup’s new P250Q-M80 SSD, which takes the idea of secure data destruction to a whole new level — with an actual physical self-destruct button.
This isn’t just a fancy phrase or marketing fluff. The drive features a dedicated circuit that can literally fry its own NAND flash memory at the push of a button. Better yet, you can hook up a separate, physical button somewhere outside your PC to trigger this destruction manually. Press and hold it for 10 seconds, and the drive smokes—literally. Well, at least in the official demo video from Computex, there’s some smoke and sparks flying. The drive also has LED lights that show you how far along the destruction process is, and if the power cuts out mid-destruction, it keeps going once power’s back.
Of course, if you don’t want to go full Mission: Impossible on your SSD, the P250Q-M80 also supports all the usual Gen 4 SSD security features—software wipes and permanent erasures that keep the drive intact and usable. But TeamGroup is clearly aiming this at specialized customers, like defense contractors or industrial automation outfits, who need a surefire way to destroy data fast. And, well… I’m sure there are plenty of folks with their own reasons to want to “self-destruct” a drive.
Specs-wise, it’s no speed demon—7,000 MB/s read and 5,500 MB/s write is solid but not record-breaking. Max capacity tops out at 2TB, which is plenty for most use cases that require this level of security. The price? TeamGroup isn’t saying, but you can always reach out on their website if you want to chat about blowing up your data on demand.