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Most SSDs only guarantee your data for 90 days when off. Even high grade, SLC, professional SSDs. Hard drives fare better, but your best bet for decade-long co

by wazoox 7y ago

Most SSDs only guarantee your data for 90 days when off. Even high grade, SLC, professional SSDs. Hard drives fare better, but your best bet for decade-long conservation remains tape.

ByThyGrace 7y ago
Is anyone interested in amateur digital archiving just destined to losing it all in the long run? You'd think there'd be a market for long life HDDs. Edit: Yes, you could just replace old hardware with new hardware, but it creates so much waste...
- Multicomp 7y ago
  That's where hopefully Microsoft project silica will make it permanent for all practical purposes digital data storage available. It apparently uses a similar basic process as those mall kiosks that take a volumetric picture of your face and then etch it into a cube of glass? But in this case, they just write the data to the side of a small piece of glass over the course of days and it's basically permanent for all eternity unless something breaks it.
everdrive 7y ago
Wait, what. An SSD won't hold your data for more than 90 days if it's powered off?
- wazoox 7y ago
  It will probably hold it much longer. However it's not guaranteed to do any better than that.
  - pricechild 7y ago
    I don't think you'd have much luck getting anything back from that "guarantee"... so is it a guarantee?
wtallis 7y ago
That 90 days figure applies only to SSDs that have worn out their entire rated write endurance, and only to enterprise/datacenter SSDs. For client/consumer SSDs, the standard for unpowered data retention at the end of life is one year (at 30°C, compared to 40°C for enterprise drives). That longer retention requirement is one contributing factor to consumer SSDs being rated with lower write endurance. In practice, hardly anyone uses up the entire write endurance of their SSD, especially not if they're using it to store backups, archives, or other relatively static data. Flash memory that isn't worn out has much longer retention times.

by wazoox 7y ago

Most SSDs only guarantee your data for 90 days when off. Even high grade, SLC, professional SSDs. Hard drives fare better, but your best bet for decade-long conservation remains tape.

ByThyGrace 7y ago

Is anyone interested in amateur digital archiving just destined to losing it all in the long run? You'd think there'd be a market for long life HDDs. Edit: Yes, you could just replace old hardware with new hardware, but it creates so much waste...

Multicomp 7y ago
That's where hopefully Microsoft project silica will make it permanent for all practical purposes digital data storage available. It apparently uses a similar basic process as those mall kiosks that take a volumetric picture of your face and then etch it into a cube of glass? But in this case, they just write the data to the side of a small piece of glass over the course of days and it's basically permanent for all eternity unless something breaks it.

everdrive 7y ago

Wait, what. An SSD won't hold your data for more than 90 days if it's powered off?

wazoox 7y ago
It will probably hold it much longer. However it's not guaranteed to do any better than that.
- pricechild 7y ago
  I don't think you'd have much luck getting anything back from that "guarantee"... so is it a guarantee?

wtallis 7y ago

That 90 days figure applies only to SSDs that have worn out their entire rated write endurance, and only to enterprise/datacenter SSDs. For client/consumer SSDs, the standard for unpowered data retention at the end of life is one year (at 30°C, compared to 40°C for enterprise drives). That longer retention requirement is one contributing factor to consumer SSDs being rated with lower write endurance. In practice, hardly anyone uses up the entire write endurance of their SSD, especially not if they're using it to store backups, archives, or other relatively static data. Flash memory that isn't worn out has much longer retention times.