So I get huge speeds, virtually no i/o wait and when I delete something I can be sure it's gone forever? The only problem left to solve is huge capacities for these devices at relatively affordable prices.
EDIT: Speaking of which: http://sec.pn.to/pw/?plugin=attach&pcmd=open&file=ta...
tl;dr - That's just security by obscurity. Someone will figure out how to read unerased data. (That said, those blocks eventually will be erased and recycled, it's just a matter of when.)
The (a) case is likely OSes using the "trim" command and the (b) cases are inherent in how SSD firmware works (by necessity). WRT the (b) case, SSDs have to garbage collect. Their write speed, and thus user satisfaction, is dependent on it keeping a large number of erased blocks ready to be written to.
[1] http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Write_Blockers - apparently simply a "man in the middle" hardware that filters out write commands, lets through read commands.
Obviously, there is no reasonable way for a SDD to even know that a "write blocker" is attached, so it is not surprising (to me) that the SDD garbage collects with it attached.
Yes, so the proper way to analyse an SSD is to just access what's in the flash chips directly. Such methods and equipment will probably need to be developed specifically for each SSD controller chipset. Also, investigators will need to get to an SSD sooner.
If you're wiping the entire drive and the firmware isn't buggy, you should be ok - but being sure that single file(s) are actually deleted is not likely.
Exactly the opposite message. Who to believe?
Many people (both criminals and victims of criminals) have also been burned by thinking that data they thought they deleted was recoverable in this way.