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Data Recovery & Solid State
theoverlay writes "With all of the recent hype about solid-state drives in both consumer applications and enterprise environments I have a real concern about data recovery on these devices. I know there are services for flash memory restoration but has anyone been involved in data restoration projects on ssd drives? What are the limits and circumstances that have surfaced so far? What tools will law enforcement and government use to retrieve data for investigations and the like?"
I know that is not enough to securely wipe a traditional hd. the current standard is 7 passes of random 1s and 0s. even worse than that, I have had people who formerly worked nsa tell my that really sensitive data is only considered gone when they have dismantled the drive and melted the platters in acid.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
If you want security, encrypt before you store. If you want recoverability, get a real backup. Seriously, this has been this way ever since computers got fast enough to do AES on the fly against disk. Ubuntu supports it in the alternate installer, Debian and probably the rest too. On Windows various closed source software like DriveCrypt++, Bitlocker and whatnot is available. This isn't really all that difficult...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I agree with your post, and would like to point out that the original question is moot. Between SSD media, redundant drive systems, and autonomous remote backup platforms, you should care little about the media data recovery rate. Only care that you've put an intelligent data management system into place. Don't have a single point of failure (like the media) and you'll be fine.
I'd figure the same as with regular harddisks apply. One pass and gone the data is.
Except that unlike normal HDDs, SSDs intentionally fragment the data across the drive to avoid writing to a specific section of the drive repeatedly (an attempt to avoid over-writing to the flash). Assuming you don't fill up the ENTIRE DRIVE, your data might very well still be there.
I'd love to ask Ontrack or Drivesavers about it, to be honest.
Which is the same infallible data erasure option for any media. Incineration.
Trusting data loss to just one delete command is being broken in the head.
You're citing a 1996 paper when discussing modern HDDs?