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

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 re-examined.