6 ms·

what if you just fill the whole disk with random bytes? Wouldn't that take care of it ?

thelopa 5y ago
There could be bits of plain text data left over in over-provisioned storage set up in case a block goes bad (e.g. a flash cell that can no longer erase).
- flavius29663 5y ago
  Would that extra cell be used unless there is a need for it? If there is a need for it, then I assume it will be a need for it when you fill the drive too. But yeah, it depends on the manufacturer of the drive, so you don't want to take the chance, Full encryption is unbeatable.
  - dan000892 5y ago
    Flash devices maximize the longevity of the cells by wear leveling. The on-board controller maintains a map between the physical cell layout and the logical layout that's changing with every single write operation. Extra cells are used both reactively and proactively. Reactively: Error when erasing or write/verifying a cell? Copy contents to spare cell, flag old cell as bad, update the map, maybe complain if running low on spare cells but otherwise call it a day. Proactively: Cells are only rated for so many erase operations which directly informs the longevity (total bytes written) of a drive. MLC cells can be written to 3,000 times and SLC 20,000 but the latter is much more expensive. For use cases where greater longevity is required (without spending SLC money), why not put a disk together that has twice as many cells as it needs and wear level across all of them? If you `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=64k status=progress` your 32GB drive and it'll complete after 32GB but you have no way of knowing how many more cells that drive has that you didn't touch. (Also as one of the parents pointed out, disk controllers are getting smart. You don't know if it was transparently compressing data too causing you to touch even fewer cells. ATA Secure Erase is the way to go.)
infogulch 5y ago
You don't have access to "the whole disk". What the drive presents to the OS as an array of blocks is just an abstraction now. There are at least 3 commonly known ways that "filling" the disk with random bytes could fail to destroy the original data: * If any part of a block is found to be corrupted for any reason, the block is transparently set aside and never used again, but its contents may still be present to read for someone that is willing to bypass the drive's firmware. * To prevent uneven wear, ssd capacity is over provisioned which means it has more cells than what it tells the OS. In general, when you "overwrite" a block on your drive, that data likely does not actually overwrite the cell where the data used to be. The drive picks some other unused cell, writes the data there, and does some bookkeeping so it knows that this new cell is what the OS means when it asks for that block again. When the OS "fills the disk" it may not end up overwriting some of those cells due to the firmware's arbitrary wear leveling algorithm. * Many drives have a local write buffer that uses different, faster persistent storage to temporarily save writes to the drive as it takes its time to write out cells. This is to prevent data loss in the case of a power outage. In case the drive hadn't fully written all the blocks to the main storage when it boots back up again, it finds the data in the write buffer and finishes the job. The write buffer has both of the previous issues except its even more arbitrary and depends on load profile which your random filling routine is not guaranteed to hit. There is no such thing as securely overwriting blocks anymore, because "blocks" are a fiction presented to your OS by the drive's firmware. There is only one way to be sure the data on the drive is filled with random data: make it random to begin with, and ensure that it stays random by destroying the decryption key.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >* If any part of a block is found to be corrupted for any reason, the block is transparently set aside and never used again, but its contents may still be present to read for someone that is willing to bypass the drive's firmware. How useful is one block of recovered data?
  - KMnO4 5y ago
    Blocks can be up to 4mb. You could store all your passwords, private keys, contact/identity info, etc

There could be bits of plain text data left over in over-provisioned storage set up in case a block goes bad (e.g. a flash cell that can no longer erase).

flavius29663 5y ago
Would that extra cell be used unless there is a need for it? If there is a need for it, then I assume it will be a need for it when you fill the drive too. But yeah, it depends on the manufacturer of the drive, so you don't want to take the chance, Full encryption is unbeatable.
- dan000892 5y ago
  Flash devices maximize the longevity of the cells by wear leveling. The on-board controller maintains a map between the physical cell layout and the logical layout that's changing with every single write operation. Extra cells are used both reactively and proactively. Reactively: Error when erasing or write/verifying a cell? Copy contents to spare cell, flag old cell as bad, update the map, maybe complain if running low on spare cells but otherwise call it a day. Proactively: Cells are only rated for so many erase operations which directly informs the longevity (total bytes written) of a drive. MLC cells can be written to 3,000 times and SLC 20,000 but the latter is much more expensive. For use cases where greater longevity is required (without spending SLC money), why not put a disk together that has twice as many cells as it needs and wear level across all of them? If you `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=64k status=progress` your 32GB drive and it'll complete after 32GB but you have no way of knowing how many more cells that drive has that you didn't touch. (Also as one of the parents pointed out, disk controllers are getting smart. You don't know if it was transparently compressing data too causing you to touch even fewer cells. ATA Secure Erase is the way to go.)

infogulch 5y ago

You don't have access to "the whole disk". What the drive presents to the OS as an array of blocks is just an abstraction now. There are at least 3 commonly known ways that "filling" the disk with random bytes could fail to destroy the original data: * If any part of a block is found to be corrupted for any reason, the block is transparently set aside and never used again, but its contents may still be present to read for someone that is willing to bypass the drive's firmware. * To prevent uneven wear, ssd capacity is over provisioned which means it has more cells than what it tells the OS. In general, when you "overwrite" a block on your drive, that data likely does not actually overwrite the cell where the data used to be. The drive picks some other unused cell, writes the data there, and does some bookkeeping so it knows that this new cell is what the OS means when it asks for that block again. When the OS "fills the disk" it may not end up overwriting some of those cells due to the firmware's arbitrary wear leveling algorithm. * Many drives have a local write buffer that uses different, faster persistent storage to temporarily save writes to the drive as it takes its time to write out cells. This is to prevent data loss in the case of a power outage. In case the drive hadn't fully written all the blocks to the main storage when it boots back up again, it finds the data in the write buffer and finishes the job. The write buffer has both of the previous issues except its even more arbitrary and depends on load profile which your random filling routine is not guaranteed to hit. There is no such thing as securely overwriting blocks anymore, because "blocks" are a fiction presented to your OS by the drive's firmware. There is only one way to be sure the data on the drive is filled with random data: make it random to begin with, and ensure that it stays random by destroying the decryption key.

dylan604 5y ago
>* If any part of a block is found to be corrupted for any reason, the block is transparently set aside and never used again, but its contents may still be present to read for someone that is willing to bypass the drive's firmware. How useful is one block of recovered data?
- KMnO4 5y ago
  Blocks can be up to 4mb. You could store all your passwords, private keys, contact/identity info, etc