Timeline for How isolated are files on a VirtualBox virtual machine from the host filesystem?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 7, 2013 at 8:42 | comment | added | Polynomial | If you're using an SSD, your OS should automatically detect that a standard volume format operation should be done via the proper SSD-specific firmware command. This will wipe the entire SSD by resetting the internal encryption key, rendering all data useless and unrecoverable at the hardware level. If you're only trying to destroy the virtual machine, that's a different story. When I say "overwriting sectors", I mean overwriting the sectors on the host disk that are used to store the virtual disk file - shred / sdelete will do that job fine. | |
| Jan 7, 2013 at 8:28 | comment | added | jmort253 | Hi Polynomial, thanks for the answers so far. So if I'm on a Mac, you're saying I don't need to do anything except just use shred or sdelete from the terminal of my Mac to then delete the virtual disk? I was slightly confused by the first bullet point in your answer, as wouldn't overwriting the disk sectors involve formatting the entire Mac OS partition, not just the virtual disk? | |
| Jan 3, 2013 at 15:39 | comment | added | Polynomial | All modern SSDs use that mechanism. It's transparent to the OS. | |
| Jan 3, 2013 at 15:21 | comment | added | Mario Awad | Do all SSDs use the second option or does some of them not use encryption at all? and how can I tell before buying one? | |
| Dec 26, 2012 at 22:11 | comment | added | Polynomial | @jmort253 At that point you're better off using shred or sdelete - encrypting it at that point is just needless computation. | |
| Dec 26, 2012 at 6:06 | comment | added | jmort253 | So, if I had a dynamically allocated virtual disk, and I encrypted it before deleting it, would that suffice? | |
| Dec 25, 2012 at 19:23 | history | answered | Polynomial | CC BY-SA 3.0 |