gHacks technology news » ssd tips http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/08/ssd-security-erase-solid-state-drives-data/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/08/ssd-security-erase-solid-state-drives-data/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:03:57 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/08/ssd-security-erase-solid-state-drives-data/ ssd securityWhile it is still not common sense to securely erase data on hard drives (read: Securely Erase Files) before computers or hard drives are sold or given away the matter becomes even more complicated where SSD – Solid State Drives – are concerned. The positive aspect of Solid State Drives is that data cannot be recovered if it is overwritten on the drive which means that only one pass would be needed to erase the data on the SSD. The bad news however is that not the operating system but the controller is specifying where the data is written on the SSD.

This in effect means that all methods of overwriting free space are not sufficient for erasing the data securely on those drives. This also means as well that it is not possible to erase specific files securely on the SSD. Users who want to delete data securely on SSDs have therefor the following options at hand:

  • Encryption
  • Format
  • Filling the Drive

Encryption is surely the best method of ensuring that the data on a SSD is secure as it cannot be accessed without decryption. Formatting the drive on the other hand is only reasonable if no data on that drive is needed anymore. It would otherwise require extensive backup and restoration procedures. Filling the drive with data might work as well as it would overwrite anything on the drive as well.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/08/ssd-security-erase-solid-state-drives-data/feed/ 0 Should You Defragment A SSD? http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/03/should-you-defragment-a-ssd/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/03/should-you-defragment-a-ssd/#comments Sat, 03 Jan 2009 08:45:18 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=9574 So called SSD hard drives are becoming increasingly popular especially in the netbook sector. Solid State Drives have several distinctive advantages like faster access times, lower power usage and being completely silent while running. The main disadvantage that you might notice especially in netbooks is the write speed of those drives which is usually lower than those of conventional hard drives.

With more and more Solid State Drives hitting the streets it is important to understand the differences. Defragmentation describes the process of physically organizing the contents of a hard drive or partition so that the data sectors of each file will be stored close together to reduce load and seek times.

Solid State Drives can access any location on the drive in the same time. This is one of the main advantages over hard drives. This also means that there is no need to defragment a Solid State Drive ever. These drives have actually been designed to write data evenly in all sectors of the drive which the industry is calling wear leveling. Each sector of a Solid State Drive has a limited number of writes before it cannot be overwritten anymore. (this is a theoretical limit which cannot be reached in work environments)

If you did defragment your Solid State Disk you can rest assured that you did not harm it in any way. It is just that this process is not needed and that defragmentation causes lots of write processes which means that the drive will reach its write limits sooner.

No need for defragmentation is therefor another advantage of Solid State Drives.

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