Linked Questions
32 questions linked to/from Can wiped SSD data be recovered?
130
votes
11
answers
73k
views
Is there any way to safely examine the contents of a USB memory stick?
Suppose I found a USB memory stick lying around, and wanted to examine its contents in an attempt to locate its rightful owner. Considering that USB sticks might actually be something altogether more ...
105
votes
8
answers
46k
views
How can I reliably erase all information on a hard drive?
As storage technologies change over time, using different encodings and remappings to deal with sector errors, the best way to permanently erase/wipe/shred data changes also.
Methods for flash drives ...
72
votes
3
answers
41k
views
Is it enough to only wipe a flash drive once?
According to the documentation for the "diskscrb" command for wiping conventional hard drives: http://www.forensics-intl.com/diskscrb.html
"Conforms to and exceeds the Government ...
17
votes
3
answers
9k
views
Is there a real-world example of SSD data recovery?
Secure data deletion is known to be more complicated and elusive on a solid-state drive than for a regular hard drive. For instance, the logical block mapping on the SSD's flash translation layer ...
9
votes
3
answers
20k
views
Is filling up the empty space in a disk with any data enough measure against file recovery
If I have an important data in a disk (flash, SSD or HDD) and I deleted them, I know it is easy to recover these deleted data (even by using free software like recuva. Now if I fill this disk with any ...
9
votes
3
answers
5k
views
SSD (Flash Memory) security when data is encrypted in place
I'm surveying current techniques on flash memory security. I've learned that the non-in-place update of flash memories prevent us from adapting the same encryption techniques that we used on hard ...
8
votes
3
answers
5k
views
How can files be deleted in a HIPAA-compliant way?
Any material I've come up with for data destruction standards relate to completely wiping (ATA Secure Erase) and physically destroying hard drives, but I haven't been able to find much about standards ...
8
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Is GNU shred relevant for SSDs?
The Gutmann method, which apparently is used by GNU shred, has appeared in 1996, which focused on finding random 5 to 31 patterns and taking into account particular magnetic encoding. Considering ...
8
votes
1
answer
8k
views
Does the ATA Trim command irrecoverably delete data on an SSD?
I occasionally see people reference the difficulty of deleting data from an Solid State Disk. Because of the nature of SSDs (wear leveling, etc), simply writing to the same sector of the disk doesn't ...
8
votes
1
answer
12k
views
Do I need to use the cipher command with a newer SSD to erase files?
I've used Eraser in the past, and recently became aware of the cipher command in Windows 8. Specifically, with the /w flag:
/w removes data from portions of the volume it can access and have not
...
7
votes
4
answers
862
views
Special form of file system to prevent recovering after secure wipe data
I'm looking for file system with reasonably error corrections, but rugged against forensic after wipe.
Say, encrypted container via loop mounted like ext4 - journal file system. This is good ...
7
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Have anyone tried to extract the encryption key from a SSD?
After reading this forum thread it does not sound like encrypted SSDs provide much protection at all - specifically encryption only occurs between the controller chipset and the NAND storage.
Why is ...
7
votes
4
answers
27k
views
How to physically destroy an SSD at home?
SSDs seem to be notoriously tricky to properly erase (see for example this question and answers here). An easier and potentially safer solution could be to physically destroy the SSD device.
I am ...
6
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Wipe rewriteable optical media (CD, DVD, ...) content
There are already several posts here discussing the specificities of magnetic hard disks and SSD and how to properly wipe their content:
With magnetic disk a complete overwrite of the disk content is ...
4
votes
3
answers
7k
views
How secure is wiping an encrypted Android device?
based on my previous knowledge, I know that the iPhone has hardware encryption implemented on recent models. When we issue the "Erase all contents and settings" command, the encryption keys are ...