R&D: Comparative Study of Wear-Leveling in SSD With NTFS File System

IEEE Xplore has published, in 2019 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data) proceedings, an article written by Ashar Neyaz, Bing Zhou, and Narasimha Karpoor, Sam Houston State University,Department of Computer Science, Huntsville, TX, USA.

Abstract: “Traditional hard disk drives (HDD) are gradually being substituted by new non-mechanical storage media called solid-state drive (SSD) as they are lighter, faster, and more reliable alternatives. Companies have already started to use SSD in their products but the downside they are facing is its substantial price for less storage capacity. When it comes to performing forensic analysis on SSD, the autonomous behavior of the media makes it look less promising compared to the traditional hard disk drives. With wear-leveling on the go, the persistence of deleted data is always in question. The deleted data can stay on the media either partially or wholly and is dependent on various factors including file system, make and model, and the operating systems running to name a few. In this research, we analyzed the behavior of wear-leveling with NTFS file system on triple-level cell (TLC) serial-ATA (SATA) SSD as the primary storage device. The aim of this paper is to give a detailed comparison of wear-leveling with TRIM ON and TRIM OFF states effecting different file types. Our research work will help in providing a benchmark for digital forensics investigators who are constantly troubled by the thought of examining SSD.“