Secure delete and solid state drives

[bingefeller]

Just a general question - I noticed that Apple have done away with secure delete and I read on a few places that using this can shorten the lifespan of SS drives - I'm no expert so I don't know if this is true.

I also read that if you have hard drive encryption, and have a SS drive, then it's extremely difficult to recover deleted files - is this true?

 

[cruisin]

Secure delete overwrites the drive, usually multiple times. These extra writes are what shorten the SSD life. Although by the time the SSD finally dies the computer will generally be old enough to be recycled that the extra writes won't make much difference unless you do it often.

Unless you have the key or can break the encryption, the drive will look like gibberish. So it will be hard to recover something when you can't even tell where it should be on the drive. And you still need to defeat the encryption even if you somehow have the clairvoyance to know where the file is.

Encrypt your SSD, and then when you need to secure erase it you can just delete everything off the drive.

 

[bingefeller]

Secure delete overwrites the drive, usually multiple times. These extra writes are what shorten the SSD life. Although by the time the SSD finally dies the computer will generally be old enough to be recycled that the extra writes won't make much difference unless you do it often.

Unless you have the key or can break the encryption, the drive will look like gibberish. So it will be hard to recover something when you can't even tell where it should be on the drive. And you still need to defeat the encryption even if you somehow have the clairvoyance to know where the file is.

Encrypt your SSD, and then when you need to secure erase it you can just delete everything off the drive.

I have my SSD encrypted. I was wondering, if I ever came to sell my MacBook Air, would I need to securely delete all my data or would a simple erase disk be enough, given the data was encrypted in the first place?

 

[cruisin]

As long as you erase the drive, it will be fine. You can erase and then reinstall OSX and re-encrypt the drive if you are paranoid (about an hour or two of effort).

 

[bingefeller]

As long as you erase the drive, it will be fine. You can erase and then reinstall OSX and re-encrypt the drive if you are paranoid (about an hour or two of effort).

That's good, thank you!!