Patent ID: 8352519

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving data for storage and management, the data comprising a plurality of data items; assigning the plurality of data items to a plurality of equivalency classes using a sampling algorithm, the plurality of equivalency classes comprising a random sample of the data stored on a solid state storage device; appending the data according to one or more operations of the sampling algorithm, the appending comprising semi-random writing of the data onto the solid state storage device, the semi-random writing being based at least on accessing a plurality of blocks of the solid state storage device randomly and providing sequential access to the data within individual pages of the plurality of blocks of the solid state storage device; identifying, using the sampling algorithm, an individual equivalency class of individual data items to discard according to one or more criteria; and discarding the individual data items of the individual equivalency class identified by the sampling algorithm, the discarding comprising block-wise erasure of the individual data items of the individual equivalency class identified by the sampling algorithm while remaining equivalency classes of the random sample remain stored on the solid state storage device, wherein other individual equivalency classes from the remaining equivalency classes are subsequently discarded using the block-wise erasure of the solid state storage device.