[SOLVED] SSD security

[wogfor]

This is a question I ask out of curiosity mostly. In days gone by when you retired, sold or gave away old computers, it was recommended to "wipe" spinning drives with programs that would delete and overwrite the disk to prevent possible recovery of sensitive information.

Is this an issue with solid state drives? I know it it a totally different process they use to store information. I even wonder about other portable devices, like tablets and phones. I know there is a lot of information in my phone.

As I said, I am curious at this point.

 

[Diddly]

you could wipe the SSD or NVMe drive, but it would be much easier to destroy the drive with a hammer or just snap it. HDDs are much harder to physically damage compared to SSDs - NVMe drives are really easy.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Is this an issue with solid state drives? I know it it a totally different process they use to store information.

You perform SSD Secure erase and that's it. Takes several minutes.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

All SSD's support a secure erase function that 0's out all cells and returns the drive to factory condition. Absolutely nothing of the original data will exist after this is run. You do not want to run this function too often as it touches every single cell and increments their write cycles by 1 each and every time it's run.

 

[beers]

but it would be much easier to destroy the drive with a hammer or just snap it

I mean, or you could just wipe the data and retain the monetary value, unless you can show me a proof of concept data restoration attack against flash bits.