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I met somebody once who told me that digital drives expire and will lose data unless they are “fired up” from time to time. Because of that, his company had a s
by Rd6n6 5y ago
I met somebody once who told me that digital drives expire and will lose data unless they are “fired up” from time to time. Because of that, his company had a system of taking out and doing reads on their old storage in a clunky and manual way throughout the year. I wasn’t able to find out why this was necessary or the time frames involved. Can anybody confirm or deny or explain?
- Someone 5y agoThere were (¿are?) hard drives where the drive heads would stick to the surface if the drive wasn’t used for long periods (https://burgessforensics.com/data-recovery-myths-and-misconceptions/ https://burgessforensics.com/data-recovery-myths-and-misconc...)
- dehrmann 5y agoOver time, flash memory leaks the charge that holds your data. Here's an explanation I found: https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5cexmj/how_stable_are_usb_thumbdrives_for_longterm/ https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5cexmj/how_stab...
- Rd6n6 5y ago> FLASH memory works by essentially placing some electrons on an insulated island of material through quantum tunnelling and then "trapping" them there. However, there is some probability that they can tunnel off, and thus the stored charge does leak out over time. How long it takes for enough charge to leak off that a "read" can't tell the difference (signal to noise wise) depend on the manufacturer and specifications but 10 years is definitely in the danger zone. There's also a stress degradation issue but that probably doesn't apply here. Thanks for the link!
- WalterBright 5y agoWith the advent of cheap 16T drives, just buy a new drive and copy the stuff forward once a year or two.