My Hard Drive Died 2 - Solid State Drives VS. Hard Drives

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Hosted by: Scott Moulton of MyHardDriveDied.com and Steve Cherubino of Podnutz

Running time: 55:14
Added: 8 Jun 2009

Topics discussed:

Solid State Drives (SSD)
A solid-state drive is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data.  
It emulates a hard drive interface; it is basically a hard drive with no moving parts 
SSD drives has a built-in processor, keeps track of contents, has logs and also emulates IDE or SATA drives,  
A proper name for SSD drives should be something like “IDE Flash” or something that will differentiate them from SSD memory cards 
New generation of SSD have buffer for better performance 

There is a size issue with SSD drives in terms of pricing: 
- 500GB costs around $1,000 
- 128GB costs around $500.00

Scott favors SSD drives if there was no need of space 
SSD drives add additional hours of power on a laptop 
They have less problems with heat, they have no fans, they are very quiet, and they have no moving parts 
On a desktop he recommends using a regular physical spinning disk 
The data recovery market for SSD drives is still not ready yet but as time goes on it will start to catch up.

SanDisk compared to MicroCenter sticks are way just much better. 
SanDisk uses “TrueFFS” (True flash file system) encoding format which is one of the best 
Samsung also uses this encoding format, they are a reseller for iPods and iPhones

Listeners emails:

Door-To-Door-Geek: 
Q: How do you feel about whole disk encryption? 
A: Encryption doesn’t really tax the drive, it taxes the CPU instead BUT today’s processors are much faster and more reliable 
From a data recovery perspective, you can recover a drive that is encrypted without decrypting the content 

Types of encryption:  
- PGP (Used on corporate environment) 
- SafeDisk
- BestCrypt
- GPG (Open Source Version, also known as GnuPG) 
- TrueCrypt (Free version)

Door-To-Door-Geek: 
Q: Is SATA going to be the standard drives connector for any length of time? 
A: SATA will be the connector that is going to survive, is the most robust connector 
There is another connector “ZIF ribbon cable” (PATA connector - Parallel ATA) 
They don’t last very long, allow probably 20 connections, ZIF to USB connector is hard to find 
Ribbon cables is better to buy new ones instead of cutting them

Blaine: 
Q: Which store controller chip is more reliable (Intel, JMicron, Oxford) 
A: Intel chip is one of the most robust and reliable 
Scott likes “High Point” controllers with built-in processor, they also sell IDE/SATA controllers 
PCI controllers still use your CPU

Blaine: 
Q: Has Scott found any drive mounting orientation to be better (Vertical, Horizontal) ? 
A: There is no better orientation, physically the drives adapt to the orientation and angle 
If a drive is changed from one orientation to another, little fragments that come off the platter during spinning, sometimes may affect the performance of the drive and may get it stuck.

Blaine: 
Q: Has Scott found any external enclosures to have better built quality than others? Which are the more reliable brands? 
A: All depends on the chip they are going to use 
Vantec & Maxtor drives have higher quality 

Data Recovery Classes

SANS Classes

Data Recovery Forensics Course (SEC606)

Notes by Jorge Hernandez of 123ComputerRepair.com