this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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I appreciate this thread's nuanced discussion of how file deletion works from a technical standpoint depending on storage medium. But as a user, when I delete something, it should go away forever. I don't care how.
If every time an OS had to delete something it had to fill the space with zeros or garbage data multiple times just to make extra sure it's gone, we'd all be trashing our flash chips very fast, and performance would be heavily degraded. There really isn't a way around this.
The solution to keep private files private is to put them into an encrypted container of some sort where you control the keys.
Well, the storage device should handle that then. And modern NVMEs do. Self-encrypted drives are used to hide deleted information from an attacker that desolders the storage chips.
Edit: there are NVMEs that dont use self encryption, BUT they should still recognize a deleted sector.
That would apply in my "encrypted container of some sort" solution, yes.