Questions tagged [ssd]

A solid-state drive (SSD, also known as a solid-state disk although it contains neither an actual disk nor a drive motor to spin a disk) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently.

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Is it possible for the firmware of an SSD be infected by malware/malicious rootkits via the internet?

I am asking this because based on Snowden's relevations, bad actors "interdict" (intercept) shipments of routers, HDDs, SSDs, servers, etc., install malicious rootkits and spyware in the firmware and ...
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Remove malicious rootkits and spyware from HDDs and SSDs

I have read at least twenty articles dating from the time Edward Snowden's startling revelations about rogue nations and bad actors embedding malicious rootkits and spyware in the firmware of hard ...
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Secure erase partition only on SSD, not the whole thing

I have a 512 SSD which is partitioned into essentially two 256 areas. One for Windows, the other for Linux (Ubuntu). Neither is encrypted. I want to clean my system up, but am only concerned about the ...
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Secure way to wipe an entire SSD? [duplicate]

I've read some articles and they appear to suggest the idea of using the dd command to wipe an entire SSD before encrypting it. The drive in question is a Samsung 970 EVO PCIe NVMe V-NAND M.2 2280 ...
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Do Meltdown and Spectre affect other Intel products such as SSDs?

I've found a good deal on an Intel SSD but I don't want to worry about the security hole or the loss of performance from patching it.
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How does SSD with SED encrypt and decrypt data?

When you enter data and you want to save a file, the SED encrypts the data but where does the encryption process occur to be exact? Does SED encrypt data in memory before it gets to the disk? Or do ...
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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 ...
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Wiping an SSD with Parted Magic seemed too quick

I'm selling a computer with an SSD (it's a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1). I wiped the drive using Parted Magic. I used the ATA method. I'm not sure what that is but it was the only setting available. It ...
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TCG OPAL 2.0 Specification on technical Implementation?

Where can one find more technical information on the TCG OPAL 2.0 standard regarding how exactly the crypto has to been implemented in self encrypting drives? I couldn't find OPAL 2.0 implementation ...
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Bought a used surface book online, any security precautions to take? [duplicate]

I have purchased a used surface book from Ebay, unpackaged and ran the device. The low price of the device lured me in despite my adverse attitude to used devices. Is there anything I need to perform ...
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SSD Wipe to remove known & unknown malware [duplicate]

Does anyone know of a method to wipe a HDD that gives a high degree of confidence that any malware present will not persist when the OS is reinstalled? Using tools on Linux and/or Windows? We have ...
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Is it secure to wipe a file in a Virtualbox disk if the vbox disk file is on an ssd?

Preface I searched for an answer to my question and found related questions which do not cover my question completely. Like: On SSD deleting: Can Widped SSD Data be recovered How to securely delete ...
Uwe Hafner's user avatar
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Is SSD encryption useless on data already present?

The reason I ask this question, is that presumably when contents on an SSD are encrypted, the unencrypted data is overwritten with its encrypted version. This study tells us that overwritten data can ...
Synthetic Ascension's user avatar
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If I switch to LUKS on an SSD, have I just wiped it?

I have been using an SSD with no system-level encryption. If I now switch to full disk encryption using LUKS + LVM, do I effectively wipe the old data, or is it still hanging around until overwritten?
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SSD erasure strategy for a secondhand laptop

I recently purchased a secondhand MacBook Air for work purposes; the laptop was shipped to me with a fresh install of OS X. I do not know the prior owner or what they used the laptop for, and thus I ...
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OPAL SSD full-disk encryption and key generation

So modern solid-state drives often support OPAL standard for full-disk encryption. If I understand correctly, it uses a user password to encrypt a key which is then in turn used to encrypt content of ...
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SSD Erasure verification

I was hoping someone would be able to give some advise on what would be the best way to verify that an SSD has been erased completely. We are currently using Blancco v5 and even though it says it has ...
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BIOS rootkit : Computrace and Wiping SSD HPA on Linux + protect it with custom encryption

My primary goal is to close firmware backoors. First, I want to know if my plan might work or not, and if it is a good idea, how to implement it: I erased preinstalled Windows and installed Linux ...
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Is using video editing software to fill SSD with junk video secure?

I'm about to sell an old 128GB external SSD, and I've read various guides saying it's difficult to be sure that data is erased when using traditional zero-fills etc. I'm on Mac OSx, and I got the ...
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How do I verify that my FDE/SED Opal SSD is indeed encrypted

... preferably without having to remove the drive from the laptop? I'd like to explicitly test that data is indeed encrypted at rest on my SSD but can't think of a way; eg: even if boot my laptop off ...
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Best current methods for preventing data leakage from SSD

I'm wondering about the current best practices for ensuring data confidentiality on an SSD used as an OS boot drive (under Linux). Important considerations are: Ensures against data leakage in the ...
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Safe erase of a Toshiba SSD with Absolute Secure Disk software

I have a SSD drive extracted from a crashed laptop which seems to be working, but it's got a Absolute Secure Disk sofware which asks for password when I try to boot from the drive or denies any access ...
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HDD password vs Bitlocker

I have a Samsung SSD 850 with an HDD password set. It seems from articles such as this and this that the data is fully encrypted, and requires the password to view. Is there any requirement or ...
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How to erase as much as possible an SSD without ATA Secure Erase?

The question is almost completely answered. However, more details are still needed. See Update 2 down here. I've learnt that the ATA Secure Erase is uncorrectly implemented in SSDs (sources are down ...
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How BIOS password stored internally?

Is password hashed before saving to CMOS? Which hash algorithm is used? How much storage is dedicated for passwords? What is about passwords of SSD with AES? Does BIOS save it inside drive (just ...
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Enabling SED for SSD and data remanence

I have an SSD that can do self-encryption, but the encryption was not activated. The SSD has data on it, and now I want to enable the self-encryption functionality, preferably doing it in-place. I ...
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Integrity of an SSD forensic image

Is there any solution to validate the integrity of an SSD image? If I know well in case of SSD low level disk maintenance stuff such as wear leveling is performed inside the drive in order to ...
Richard Leonard Kirner's user avatar
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Why can't I install from a USB? Kali USB installation demands a CD-ROM. How can I get around this? [closed]

I am unable to install Kali 2016.2 using a USB. The installation demands a CD-ROM. This cannot be right... Right? EDIT: Kali Linux 64 bit (25cc6d53a8bd8886fcb468eb4fbb4cdfac895c65) ISO used ...
Matthew's user avatar
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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 ...
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When is garbage collection activated on my Samsung T3 external usb SSD drive?

The trim command is unsupported on my Samsung T3 external usb ssd drive. I would like to know when and under what conditions the internal garbage collection is activated so it purges deleted files on ...
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Is scrubbing a ssd drive effective in situations where you can't use the trim command?

I have a luks encrypted external usb ssd drive (Samsung T3) which is unable to use the trim command. This leaves me to search for a different way to securely erase the free space inside the encrypted ...
user638145's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
765 views

Password managers and SSD wear and tear

I've been looking at this topic for a long time, and am still paranoid about this. I have an 1 TB SSD with Ubuntu 16.04 on it. From what I have read, using disk encryption is bad for an SSD due to ...
Thomas Byerly's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
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How secure is hardware Full disk encryption (FDE) for SSD's

Is there any research as to how secure hardware encryption of SSD's is - for example Samsung EVO 850? Or at least any articles that explain how it works?
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SSD full disk encryption

What's the state of FDE with software such as TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt for SSD's - my main concern being that SSD's leave some free space to prolong the life of the drive - would it store unencrypted data ...
kat's user avatar
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Is wiping LUKS header needed?

So I previously had an encrypted install of Debian, and wanted to install a new distro with full system encryption again. Now I understand that you don't need to fill the disk with random data if you ...
Arch's user avatar
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What parameters do I give cryptsetup?

I want to have an encrypted partition on my SSD. Benchmarks (a 100 samples of 100MiB each): Average read speeds: 418 MB/s Average write speeds: 386 MB/s # Tests are approximate using memory only (no ...
Mars's user avatar
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How are SSDs different from HDDs from the privacy point of view? [duplicate]

How are SSDs different from HDDs from the privacy point of view? Is it easier or harder to recover traces of deleted and/or wiped (overwritten) files from an SSD than from a HDD?
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How do I wipe a disk that DBAN can't read?

I have a Samsung 850 SSD that has recently been dying on me -- there appear to be some memory issues. I'm considering sending in the drive for replacement under the warranty program, but it contains ...
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Samsung SSD 840/850 EVO with DiskCryptor?

Samsung's 840/850 EVO SSDs have hardware full disk encryption feature, however the stock disk management app (Magician) only mentions BitLocker's support. Encrypted Drive feature provided by ...
Łukasz K.'s user avatar
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1 answer
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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 ...
Steve Sether's user avatar
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Using FileVault on a Mac with existing data

I have recently got a Mac which I have started using already without any encryption while looking for the best solution. I have come to the conclusion that using Mac's own file encryption technology ...
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