Ssd Hard Drive Question?
I’m in a computer forensics class right now and the teacher already left and this idea just hit me. The idea is to unplug the computer from the wall because its reutine. Now suppose I have a SSD HDD and in the background I have a batchfile moving files.. all the time. and they pull the plug, wont it destroy that hard drive? Ive destroyed my GPS and numerous flashdrives doing this… by pulling it out while it was transfering data.. sadly all by accident.
As the first user said, it would only corrupt the data, (some of it). Even then though the data could still be recovered. If your plan is to destroy a HDD then look into over heating it, and overprocessing it. Or just use a sledge hammer!
it will not “destroy” the drive in the sense that it will be rendered unusable but will likely corrupt the files. the same is true with flash drives… unplugging them while files are being transferred may corrupt the data but certainly it will not “destroy” the flash drive.
Just unplugging the computer probably isn’t the best step to take. It also won’t do any real harm. The drive itself will still be use-able, just the files on it wont be in the best shape. Anyone could easily use a date recovery program to get back anything at this point.
This means that the batch file idea wouldn’t work. Only if the person was lucky would part of the file get damaged, just the part that is in between sections of the disk. Another issue comes from this, ssd drives have a limited amount of times they can be written to so this batch file would kill the ssd quicker, still would take some time though.
now, if someone wanted to do it the really safe way, I think a regular hard disk will become erased if they are exposed to magnetic forces. This being the case, it could be set up so that once the power goes out, a magnetic force is applied to the hard drive. It could be done but any black out would be lethal also.
Now to why I said it probably isn’t the best just to unplug it. You will lose everything in the ram really. One way people actually got around hard drive encryption (certain kinds) is by freezing the ram which will keep the information in it slightly longer. So then you would lose things like open IMs, and other things on the computer that never reached the hard drive.
Other than the stuff in the ram, nothing else would be lost, but I think it should be taken into account anyway.
Also to clarify, ssd hard drives are non-volatile, which means it doesn’t need power to hold the information. ram is volatile, so it does needs the energy.