- 0 Posts
- 11 Comments
0·6 months agoThe reason that TRIM enhances life by facilitating wear leveling is that it lets the firmware know that the block no longer has useful data
Ah I see the disconnect, TRIM doesn’t live in the OS outside of the firmware, TRIM is part of the controller firmware and is exposed as an ATA command for the OS to utilize
The study I have linked in my original comment goes more in-depth
I doubt that the firmware is doing an overwrite of TRIMmed data. Rather, I expect it’s marking it as having been TRIMmed, and so can report that it’s zeroed to higher layers. If a higher layer queries the firmware for its content, sure, they might get zeroes returned. But if you can modify the firmware or otherwise bypass it, you may be able to get at the underlying media.
TRIM is garbage collection and is a part of the wear leveling system. The whole point of TRIM is to have the SSD only hold the charge it needs too for still in use (i.e. not deleted) data. It’s the charge that damages blocks over time, so to extend lifespans it clears everything not needed. It’s not overwriting data for security or anything per se, but rather just a result of its longevity processes
Now, I’m sure there are cheap no name SSD controllers out there with ineffective TRIM operations that just lie about the operation, but any controller worth its salt is gonna have proper TRIM.
There is also the “bad block” issue, where storage media can take blocks – which may contain readable data – out of use, so that higher layers cannot access them. That applies to rotational drives and it looks like SSDs do the same thing. Again, might require bypassing or modifying the firmware to get direct access. But there can be data leaked there.
Part of that process is to move the data to another block and release the charge to prevent further damage, it’s possible the block is damaged in such a way that it won’t even release the charge, but if that’s the case it’s incredibly unlikely to be readable.
I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised if there is lingering information even after zeros are written to an SSD that might be recoverable if you could directly access the media, though I’m not familiar with the situation there. That is the case for rotational drives – the drive platter itself is “analog”, doesn’t just store a discrete string of ones and zeroes at the physical level. I once knew a cryptographer who was working on quantifying that leakage for rotational drives.
Yea it’s possible, but now you’re in the needing x-ray machines, powerful microscopes, full clean room labs and people with extensive, specific skill sets which means $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ or in other words, state level budgets range. 99.99999% of people will be fine
This can happen when TRIM is disabled
Here’s a study published last year I read that goes through this exact thing
In consideration of results obtained from the experiments, it concluded that the behavior of Wear Leveling in different SSD manufacturers having the same storage capacities does not match. It varies based on the number of files, types of files, and sizes. The recovery of files from different SSD manufacturers showed different results. In all SSDs, not a single trace of any file found in disk format scenario(s). Whereas, some of the data recovered in the delete case and from only one drive. It clearly showed different behavior of data recoveries in format and delete cases. The obvious finding from this study is that the time interval of image acquisitions played a significant role, and the longer time interval supports few chances of data recovery because the TRIM and Garbage Collection process effects clearing residual data from the drives
Edit: corrected links
TRIM works outside the filesystem, it does not care about 99.9% of it, the only part it cares about is if there is a reference in filesystem to the block charges. No reference == data to be released
It could be or maybe the SSD has its own on-firmware TRIM schedule, but all major OS’s execute a TRIM on a time based schedule no longer than every 10-15 minutes.
Computer data is never actually “deleted” until it’s overwritten with new 1s and 0s — operating systems simply cut off references to it.
That’s not entirely correct, and I would expect a tech news site to know but ig not.
It’s true with spinny’s since they store data magnetically on the platter with 1s and 0s, but SSDs store data on the NAND as a held charge. If there’s a charge in the block it’s a 1 if there’s no charge it’s a 0.
With spinny’s, when a file gets marked as “deleted” the residual magnetic 1s and 0s will remain on the platter until eventually overwritten like they say
But with SSDs, when a file gets marked “deleted” then within no more than a few minutes TRIM comes along and ensures the charge on the NAND is released (Which means that data is gone, permanently) for that data, there’s no residuals to worry about like with spinny’s and is in fact necessary to ensure decent lifespans.
Only necessary on the ol spinning rust, with SSDs not only is it completely unnecessary, but it also burns extra writes.
Spinny’s store data magnetically on the platter with 1s and 0s, SSDs store data on the NAND as a held charge. If there’s a charge in the block it’s a 1 if there’s no charge it’s a 0.
With spinny’s, a file gets marked as “deleted” but the residual magnetic 1s and 0s will remain on the platter until eventually overwritten
With SSDs a file gets marked “deleted” and within no more than a few minutes TRIM comes along and ensures the charge on the NAND is released for that data, there’s no residuals to worry about like with spinny’s and is in fact necessary to ensure decent lifespans.
non-flammable end use
Safe and stable chemistry
Oh neat, finally a non-explody and/or unstable battery lmao
Hmm well
looks at the world
Could be an improvement to let the machines rule for a while
I don’t know why everyone is all shocked all of a sudden, there have been various scraper bots collecting text info for…many years now, LONG before LLMs came onto the scene.