Several years ago, Solid State drives (SSD) introduced a challenge to digital forensic specialists. Forensic acquisition of computers equipped with SSD storage became very different compared to acquisition of traditional hard drives. Instead of straightforward and predictable recovery of evidence, we are in the waters of stochastic forensics with SSD drives, where nothing can be assumed as a given.
With even the most recent publications not going beyond introducing the TRIM command and making a conclusion on SSD self-corrosion, it has been common knowledge – and a common misconception, – that deleted evidence cannot be extracted from TRIM-enabled SSD drives, due to the operation of background garbage collection…
