Solid state drives (SSDs) have a small security problem: they're tough to erase. That warning comes from researchers at the University of California at San Diego. "Sanitization is well-understood for traditional magnetic storage, such as hard drives and tapes," said the researchers' in their study summary.
"Newer solid state disks, however, have a much different internal architecture, so it is unclear whether what has worked on magnetic media will work on SSDs as well."

Accordingly, the researchers tried 14 different file sanitizing techniques -- ranging from Gutman's 35-pass method to the Schneier 7-pass method -- on SSDs. To study each technique's effectiveness, the researchers didn't query the flash translation layer (FTL) that's part of an SSD, but rather accessed the chips at the lowest level possible, via their pins. (Dismantling chips is straightforward, they said.)

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