Why SSDs make data recovery difficult
In recent times, the use of new storage units has become widespread as an alternative to hard drives: these are SSDs or solid state drives.
Unlike conventional hard drives, SSDs lack mobile components, such as magnetic platters, read heads, or motors. The only element that SSDs usually have in common with conventional disks is the electronic controller and also, in most cases, a connection interface like SATA.
SSD drives are based on flash memory technology which is dismantle by SALVAGEDATA.Ā USB memory and SD cards, storage devices that are already part of our daily lives, also work with this technology.
How do SSDs outperform conventional hard drives?
It can be said that the main advantage of SSDs compared to conventional hard drives is their speed of response.
Conventional discs need to spend a considerable amount of time getting up and running. When starting, the motor should start to rotate to move the plates until reaching the optimum speed; the reading heads must leave their parking area and move until they are positioned correctly. Then, for each read or write operation, the heads must wait for the plates to rotate and position themselves in the proper sector.
However, on an SSD, when working exclusively with flash memory, reading or writing data is much faster. Also much shorter is the time it takes for the disk to wake up and be ready to work, virtually instantly.
Pros and cons of SSD drives
There is no doubt then that SSDs have a much better performance, and that without a doubt, in the not too distant future, they will gradually replace conventional hard drives in a large part of our computer equipment.
But not everything is advantages with this type of device, with price and capacity being its main disadvantages. An SSD is considerably more expensive than a conventional disk of the same capacity. In addition, the maximum capacity that we can find today in the market for SSDs, is much less than that available in conventional drives.
It should also be mentioned that certain SSD drives are known to suffer from defects in their firmware or controllers; These failures can render the disk unusable and cause us to lose access to our data.
On the other hand,Ā most SSD models are programmed to go ācleaningāĀ (definitively deleting) the free space that remains unused in the filesystem.Ā This has serious implications if an accidental deletion of files or folders occurs, or when they disappear due to a logical error.Ā In those cases, we run a high risk that the disk will delete any rest of the deleted or lost files, causing their loss irretrievably.
What to do in case of data loss
If you know that your computer is using an SSD and you are faced with a file loss or accidental deletion situation, we recommend that you immediately shutdown your computer and put your SSD in the hands of professionals to perform data recovery.
If the computer is still on āeither by working with it, or by trying to recover the data at homeā, for every minute that more information passes, it will be irretrievably erased by the device itself, making recovery of the data impossible. the data even by professionals.
This peculiarity of SSDs can be considered a good security measure by anyone who wants that their deleted or old information cannot be recovered by anyone, but it can also be a big problem in case of accidental loss of information.
We end by remembering, as always, that the best prevention is to have one or moreĀ backup copies, updated and verified, so as not to find ourselves in the need to request a data recovery.
