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Wipe free space on SSD?

W

walkman

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
267
Is it okay/effective to use ccleaner or eraser wipe free space on a samsung SSD?

There are articles on the web from 2010 saying it's a bad idea, but I'm wondering what the current thinking is.
 
It's pointless with trim/ATA secure erase, just wastes write cycles and necessitates more GC
 
Ccleaner will try to write over deleted files so no recovery is possible. But with the way an SSD works, it will actually write elsewhere, so there is no point. Trim should be enough, but if you want real security the only way is FDE (Full Disk Encryption).
 
So really, none of the cleanup of cache, temp files, etc. that ccleaner attempts is really secure on an SSD?
 
walkman said:
So really, none of the cleanup of cache, temp files, etc. that ccleaner attempts is really secure on an SSD?
Click to expand...

What he means is that with TRIM, and the way an SSD functions, when you "delete" a file, it's pretty well gone.

However, deleting caches and temp files is a separate matter.

You can indeed use CCleaner to delete temp files and what not, using the "Secure Erase" features of these programs are more or less pointless, and waste read/write cycles on your SSD, which adds more wear.

In some SSD's, this type of function can actually damage the performance of your SSD (Not sure if the newest generation solves this particular issue or not).
 
Depending how bad someone wants the information you deleted they could read the raw flash chips and find any old info that hasn't been garbage collected, even trim doesn't immediately remove that data it just marks it as available to be GC'd. The only real way to get rid of data on a SSD is Secure ATA Erase.
 
I think a lot of security/encryption originates for the defense dept. I wonder if they allow the use of SSD's.
 
Most SSDs from the last 2 or 3 generations have some sort of built in encryption, and Secure ATA Erase completely destroys all data on the drive and takes like 30 seconds, I'd bet DoD loves SSDs.
 
Does encryption prevent someone from using something like recuva from recovering deleted files?
 
An 'undelete' utility might enable someone to recover an encrypted file, but it would still be encrypted and not accessible unless you have the decryption key.
 
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