Reliably Erasing Data from Flash-Based Solid State Drives

[Amedee Van Gasse]

On Tue, March 1, 2011 10:08, Michael Haney wrote:
> According to the Laws of Physics, information cannot be destroyed.
> Data written to disks or SSDs that are burned, crushed, smashed, bent,
> or otherwise ground into dust is "still there".  We just don't have
> the technology right now to recover data from drives that are THAT
> severely damaged.

You are misunderstanding the black hole information paradox.
Information *can* be destroyed in newtonian physics. The only information
that cannot be destroyed, is quantum information. This information is
*not* included in thermodynamics. It's the information about the
(sub)atomic particles/waves, for example the wave function of an electron.

In other words: it's possible to destroy the data of an SSD, but it's not
possible to destroy the spin of the electrons that are in the SSD.