Challenges and Considerations in Data Recovery from Solid State Media: A Comparative Analysis with Traditional Devices

Spalding, Aidan; Tan, Zhiyuan; Babaagba, Kehinde O

Abstract

Data recovery for forensic analysis of both hard drives and solid state media presents its own unique set of challenges. Hard drives face mechanical failures and data fragmentation , but their sequential storage and higher success rates make recovery more feasible. Solid State Drives (SSDs), with no moving parts and no data fragmentation, provide faster access to data but may pose challenges due to wear levelling and data retention issues. This project examines the challenges of data recovery between hard drives and solid-state media and compares them against each other. This was achieved by running several tests on four types of storage media, one of which is a hard drive, and the others are different types of solid-state media. The tests indicated that most SSDs perform as expected; however, the Intel Optane drive retained a much higher percentage of deleted data than the other drives. Despite this, all of the evaluated SSDs retained less deleted data than the hard drive. It can therefore be argued that traditional forensic processes are incapable of recovering as much deleted data from solid-state media and that these processes must be reexamined .

Citation

Spalding, A., Tan, Z., & Babaagba, K. O. (2023, November). Challenges and Considerations in Data Recovery from Solid State Media: A Comparative Analysis with Traditional Devices. Presented at The International Symposium on Intelligent and Trustworthy Computing, Communications, and Networking (ITCCN-2023), Exeter, UK

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: The International Symposium on Intelligent and Trustworthy Computing, Communications, and Networking (ITCCN-2023)
• Start Date: Nov 1, 2023
• End Date: Nov 3, 2023
• Acceptance Date: Oct 1, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 29, 2024
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 2, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 31, 2023
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1751-1756
• Book Title: Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom-2023)
• ISBN: 9798350382006
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TrustCom60117.2023.00238
• Keywords: Data Recovery; Hard Drive; Solid State Drive; Forensics Analysis
• Related Public URLs: https://hpcn.exeter.ac.uk/trustcom2023/ITCCN.htm