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> is that you have no choice other than to lose data. Right-to-repair is great and all, but trusting the storage on a laptop is crazy. I've had basically the

by ska 6y ago

> is that you have no choice other than to lose data. Right-to-repair is great and all, but trusting the storage on a laptop is crazy. I've had basically the same thing happen with Dells, etc. Forget just laptops, though they are more failure prone. Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional.

ajross 6y ago
It's not about trusting the storage, it's that failures in components not storage end up junking the storage in the repair. In all likelihood this board suffered some other sort of component failure (because if it was the flash, something would still boot and display). That 1TB flash device was perfectly good, and with only an ever so slightly compromised design could have been dropped right into a new board and the user would have left happy with "their laptop" still intact. But now the poor guy needs to recover a huge partition from partial backups, and that sucks. And it was totally avoidable.. (FWIW: I don't understand your point about not trusting storage on laptops. Modern SSDs are extremely reliable. Sure they can fail, and you should always have a plan for what happens if they do. But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage.)
- threatofrain 6y ago
  > But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage As a consumer this is perhaps practical advice. > Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional. But if you were a customer, would you be okay with a business losing your vital data because they wanted everything on a single machine? It doesn't matter if it's a laptop, it may be a server on the cloud.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I’m a consumer and a professional. Consumer me cares more about not losing my local data a lot more than professional me does. (Professional me has a lot of other copies even if not perfect backups, I could do a good-enough restore. Consumer me can’t get back a picture of my kids when they were young if I didn’t have backups.)
- cma 6y ago
  They start heavily corrupting data if left unpowered for around a year or two though, in case this gives anyone false confidence in a use case they aren't designed for.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    Do all SSDs do that? Is just powering them up every now and then enough? I mean, it's not refreshing the entire drive, is it?
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      Yes, all SSD's suffer this effect. Just plugging them in often isn't enough to make them notice and refresh all data - the SSD doesn't have a clock in so doesn't know it's been unplugged for a long time. The real answer is "for every month an SSD is powered down, leave it powered up for a day"
      - athms 6y ago
        >Yes, all SSD's suffer this effect. Wrong. Stop repeating nonsense.
        londons_explore 6y ago
        Source for my claim: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data...
        athms 6y ago
        Your source doesn't support your statement. The original poster stated, "They start heavily corrupting data if left unpowered for around a year or two though, in case this gives anyone false confidence in a use case they aren't designed for." A person asked if all SSDs do that and you said, "Yes, all SSD's suffer this effect." This statement is wrong. The AnandTech article even mentions the falsehoods and states it wants to clear up the confusion. A drive must meet certain conditions before data loss begins. Simply putting a backup or thumb drive in a safe for several years isn't going to cause data loss and the AnandTech article comes to this conclusion. Here is another article from PCWorld with commentary from the authors of the 2015 JEDEC presentation that started this hysteria. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2925173/debunked-your-ssd-wont-lose-data-if-left-unplugged-after-all.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2925173/debunked-your-ssd-wo...
- ska 6y ago
  > and you should always have a plan for what happens if they do. This is what I meant. Not that you expect your laptop to fail (or be stolen), but any important work should exist in a recoverable way. OP claims to have lost a lot of data when this happened to them. That should approximately never happen, at least not more than the day's worth when you were off network.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by ska 6y ago

ajross 6y ago

It's not about trusting the storage, it's that failures in components not storage end up junking the storage in the repair. In all likelihood this board suffered some other sort of component failure (because if it was the flash, something would still boot and display). That 1TB flash device was perfectly good, and with only an ever so slightly compromised design could have been dropped right into a new board and the user would have left happy with "their laptop" still intact. But now the poor guy needs to recover a huge partition from partial backups, and that sucks. And it was totally avoidable.. (FWIW: I don't understand your point about not trusting storage on laptops. Modern SSDs are extremely reliable. Sure they can fail, and you should always have a plan for what happens if they do. But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage.)

threatofrain 6y ago
> But in practice you should absolutely trust your laptop storage As a consumer this is perhaps practical advice. > Trusting the storage on any single machine for critical work data for any longer than necessary is unprofessional. But if you were a customer, would you be okay with a business losing your vital data because they wanted everything on a single machine? It doesn't matter if it's a laptop, it may be a server on the cloud.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I’m a consumer and a professional. Consumer me cares more about not losing my local data a lot more than professional me does. (Professional me has a lot of other copies even if not perfect backups, I could do a good-enough restore. Consumer me can’t get back a picture of my kids when they were young if I didn’t have backups.)
cma 6y ago
They start heavily corrupting data if left unpowered for around a year or two though, in case this gives anyone false confidence in a use case they aren't designed for.
- brokenmachine 6y ago
  Do all SSDs do that? Is just powering them up every now and then enough? I mean, it's not refreshing the entire drive, is it?
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    Yes, all SSD's suffer this effect. Just plugging them in often isn't enough to make them notice and refresh all data - the SSD doesn't have a clock in so doesn't know it's been unplugged for a long time. The real answer is "for every month an SSD is powered down, leave it powered up for a day"
    - athms 6y ago
      >Yes, all SSD's suffer this effect. Wrong. Stop repeating nonsense.
      - londons_explore 6y ago
        Source for my claim: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data...
        athms 6y ago
        Your source doesn't support your statement. The original poster stated, "They start heavily corrupting data if left unpowered for around a year or two though, in case this gives anyone false confidence in a use case they aren't designed for." A person asked if all SSDs do that and you said, "Yes, all SSD's suffer this effect." This statement is wrong. The AnandTech article even mentions the falsehoods and states it wants to clear up the confusion. A drive must meet certain conditions before data loss begins. Simply putting a backup or thumb drive in a safe for several years isn't going to cause data loss and the AnandTech article comes to this conclusion. Here is another article from PCWorld with commentary from the authors of the 2015 JEDEC presentation that started this hysteria. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2925173/debunked-your-ssd-wont-lose-data-if-left-unplugged-after-all.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2925173/debunked-your-ssd-wo...
ska 6y ago
> and you should always have a plan for what happens if they do. This is what I meant. Not that you expect your laptop to fail (or be stolen), but any important work should exist in a recoverable way. OP claims to have lost a lot of data when this happened to them. That should approximately never happen, at least not more than the day's worth when you were off network.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]