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At what point would a flash storage chip data actually damaged beyond recovery?

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cejoba:
Hi friends.
Before I dispose an used phone or tablet, I always physically destroy the NAND chip inside it (If it don't have disk encryption). During the process I often wonder, do I actually need to hammer/cut it one more time?
For example, is there any difference in change of data recovery, if I only crack a corner, or cut it in half, or even shatter in pieces, or burn with fire?
Of course in any case it won't be possible to read the content in normal ways, but is it possible to read it using some special sensor... Maybe a electron microscope?
I'm not a mad man, just found this thing interesting to think about, so I want to hear your opinions.
Thanks.

Ian.M:
Its well known that if the die is intact or even in pieces big enough to piece back together like a jigsaw,  FLASH memory contents can be extracted by scanning electron microscopy.  Obviously anything that effectively discharges the memory cell gate oxide will prevent this.  However unless you are a person of interest to a three letter agency or hostile nation, the odds of anyone attacking your old device that way are minimal, due to the high costs and difficulty involved.

tooki:
FWIW, if you use a device with hardware-encrypted storage (or even just use software encryption), then formatting is extremely effective, because without the decryption key, it’s just random bits. Hardware-encrypted storage does just this: when you “reformat”, it just throws away the keys.

Halcyon:
Part of my previous job was to recover data from damage chips (specifically phones) and we had quite a good success rate provided the chip wasn't completely mangled. Of course this requires special knowledge and equipment, not something your average person at home is going to be able to do.

I usually just format the device and then fill the memory with some useless crap (like the same image/video file over and over again) to overwrite as much of the user-accessible partition as possible. For the ultra paranoid, you could physically destroy the memory chip (a few goes with a hammer will do the trick).

eti:
Pack the void space inside your SSD with a sealed sachet of thermite, and install a fuse which ignites it with a sequence of self-destruct codes. I had that idea many many years ago.

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