Self-Destructing SSD-Drive Evidence
Nearly a decade ago, Solid State drives (SSD) revolutionized computer storage, bringing to the table blazing fast access speeds, low power consumption, and absence of moving parts. Along with these benefits, consumers saw severely restricted lifespan. An older SSD could only withstand so much wear before it would start losing memory. A limited number of write cycles still remains a limitation today. By this day, we still have to cope with the same limitations thanks to the ever shrinking manufacturing process and the invention of new types of NAND cells (namely TLC cells that can keep 3 bits of information per physical cell instead of 2 bits in MLC and a single bit in SLC cells). In order to overcome these technological limitations while continuously reducing the cost-per-gigabyte of storage, manufacturers perfected some very smart software algorithms. These algorithms ensure that the load is distributed evenly among the cells, quickly remapping logical addresses of NAND cells to ensure that the next write operation will occur to a cell with the least wear. Another limitation of flash-based memory is the fact that one can only write new data into an empty (erased) cell. Once an SSD drive fills up, each