Solid-state drives are fast becoming popular replacements for hard drives, especially in laptops, but experts caution that SSDs aren't as secure as commonly thought. SSDs may offer better data security than traditional hard drives, but they do not completely erase data and are vulnerable to physical hacks from light sources like an ultraviolet laser, experts say. Despite their relatively high cost and concerns about durability, SSDs are gaining popularity, particularly for use in laptops, because they consume less power and access data more quickly. Securing data on SSDs could become a larger issue when the technology becomes more widely used and reaches other portable devices like smart phones, experts said. Many SSDs use industry-standard NAND flash chips that were designed for cameras and MP3 players, so they have no physical security hooks that prevent them from being removed from enclosures, said Jim Handy, director of Objective Analysis, a semiconductor research and consulting firm. A hacker could easily unsolder NAND chips from an SSD and read the data using a flash chip programmer.
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