TIL that SSDs can lose data if left unplugged for long periods of time (only required to hold data up to 1 year), unlike HDDs which as long as the material holds it can take years.

@ChuckMcManis @djlink I’d be so afraid of “bit rot” like we saw on earlier Laserdisks… but that was decades ago.

@djlink I've kept one of my external SSDs on top of my computer for like a year, so I haven't been cooking my files so much as I have been flame-grilling them.

@djlink The good news is there's nothing on there I don't have backups of elsewhere.

@djlink I learned this through bitter experience. 6 months in a warm room was enough to lose everything.

@djlink Not only can they lose data but they can simply irrecoverably stop working if you leave them more than a year or so unplugged - dead as a doornail.

Spinny rust these days is not vastly better because the flash holding the firmware is better but not a lot better.

@lispi314 @djlink @raymaccarthy @funkylab Some years ago a quaker friend was discussing options for electronic storage of their records (which they keep and readable with great care for vast times). They did indeed decide to continue to keep them on paper both because of uncertainties around digital storage media, but also because they were worried that 80 years from now someone might not have the software or information to recover some digital media type.

@funkylab @raymaccarthy @djlink Modern SSDs do patrol scrubbing so they do indeed rewrite bad information or marginal data when needed.
Spinny rust has btw done the same thing for many years too, some spinny rust is even smart enough to relocate data behind your back so you don't even find out about the bit of the disk that's getting dodgy for some reason.

@raymaccarthy @funkylab @djlink Hard disks also wear out if stored. However your wear is mostly component failures, oxidisation and so on so quite slow. The flash chips on the hard disk drive today will also eventually dribble their brains out and it won't work any more but the flash used is generally rather less vulnerable than the very high density flash used in an SSD.

Unlike the SSD though your HDD media is more recoverable even if the electronics is dead.

@dpiponi @brunoph @djlink

There's also something to be said for the convenience of scrolling through your collection of movies in something like Jellyfin rather than flipping through several DVD folders.

And at least in theory you can backup that hard drive.

@etchedpixels @funkylab @djlink
One person had a PSU that fried everything. Tops blown off chips on the HDD PCB. I swapped the PCB for one off a same model 1T HDD & was able to recover all the data.
Electrolytic capacitors can dry out & the old paper ones before the 1960s went high leakage, though only an issue on higher voltages.
People have restored electronics up to 100 years old without much bother. After the 1960s mostly some electrolytic capacitors. Replace NiCd with NiMH batteries etc.

@etchedpixels @funkylab @djlink
SMART reporting on HDDs should reveal lots. Most Linux distros have a tool already installed to read SMART data and test HDDs.

@funkylab Honestly you come across as condescending with your posts. Please don't.

- Trimming, voltage drift scrubbing, and wear leveling will cause data to constantly get re-written.
- While Single Level Cell NAND can hold your data for a decade, QLC can lose data within 1-2 years when left unpowered.
- Controllers are aware of this and can counter this if they're powered.

Example sources:
- https://www.xda-developers.com/your-unpowered-ssd-is-slowly-losing-your-data/
- https://www.seagate.com/files/staticfiles/docs/pdf/whitepaper/tp618-ssd-tech-paper-us.pdf

SSDs are leaky capacitors.

@raymaccarthy @djlink