Erasing USB key Drives
- Thread starter freestyle
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Joel
Active Member
As of now, there isn't a good defence against it. Both scenarios don't bode well for SSD users with over provisioning and block remapping -- the very design of it is meant to ensure that applications don't see the process. Thus, only the manufacturer can release applications to sanitise blocks.
Having said that, if your file is large, block remapping will cause the large file to be scrambled, so the file data may not be as recoverable as it seems. Nonetheless, SSDs have large block sizes (64KB) so if your sensitive data is within 64KB then probably you're out of luck.
Having said that, if your file is large, block remapping will cause the large file to be scrambled, so the file data may not be as recoverable as it seems. Nonetheless, SSDs have large block sizes (64KB) so if your sensitive data is within 64KB then probably you're out of luck.
I'd welcome Joel's views, but I don't think you should apply what he said about SSDs directly to flash (USB) drives. The technology is similar, but there are significant differences; I don't think that USB drives typically have the over-provisioning found in SSDs, and they certainly have smaller block sizes. As far as I know, doing a free space erase on a USB stick will make all the deleted files on it non-recoverable, though it may not remove all the file names.nesinsula said:
Try it and seenesinsula said:
. Using a file recovery program is the best way for an ordinary user to test an erase.David
In principle, no. But the point to bear in mind is that Windows has to see your MP3 player as a drive, and how it does so will be a function of the player's firmware.nesinsula said:
Taking cameras and players I know as indicators, I would expect that formatting the player, or restoring it to factory condition would leave some sort of folder structure which would be visible when the player is mounted as a drive. If that's what you see in Windows, there shouldn't be a problem about erasing the free space. There may of course be space on the player that cannot be accessed as part of the drive, but, as you could never access that directly in any case, that should not be an issue.
David
Altair1572
New Member
Even 1 pass is hard work for a flash memory using wear levelling...
Joel
Active Member
Yes -- but the way flash memory is designed probably means that one pass will render the data irrecoverable (one pass may also be too much for some people.) Modern magnetic drives should have the same behaviour, but because of historic differences (such as the commonly cited Gutmann paper) people still apply multiple passes on hard drives.
Joel
Active Member
You cannot physically address sectors on a disk from software; the most you can do from software is logically addressing them.
It is the job of the disk firmware to translate logical addresses to physical addresses and AFAIK there isn't a way to physically address them, short of using vendor-proprietary commands (which are proprietary...)
It is the job of the disk firmware to translate logical addresses to physical addresses and AFAIK there isn't a way to physically address them, short of using vendor-proprietary commands (which are proprietary...)
