SSD no good for long term storage?

[mazinz]

I still have and use my normal "spinning rust" drive. However a friend of mine sent me some info regarding SSD drives in that they can lose your data if temps get too hot or cold or more so if not powered on for a long time (should you pack the drive away in storage for a few months). I have never heard of such a thing prior. I then read a few articles on google regarding this, but if true why would such a drive be as popular as they are today?

I was thinking about getting an ssd (external) but after hearing the issue with losing data if not powered on often, is making me think twice about it.

Have any of you experienced such a thing with an ssd drive you own? Are these articles more so paranoia or is there some truth to this?

[darkknight145]

Even spinning disk can lose data if left unused for long periods!

[mazinz]

Even spinning disk can lose data if left unused for long periods!

Of course, thats true for any drive, but I do have quite a few old hdds (in older systems) going back to the 90's that still fire up after years of no use.

When I was first sent the ssd info it outright sounded sketchy as hell to me. When I read some other things, the general consensus was if you don't fire up the ssd for 1-2 months you have a very strong chance of losing the data on the drive. Most articles kept saying "evaporate". Still seems a bit off to me. Sounds like the old paranoia of "dvds/cds only lasting ten years" sort of thing. This is why I was asking here. Would you really need to power it up say at least once a month to retain the data?

[VoodooFX]

...if you don't fire up the ssd for 1-2 months you have a very strong chance of losing the data on the drive...

Change "months" to years, then it would be close to the truth, modern ssd's claim to be able to hold data for decades without power.

I do have quite a few old hdds (in older systems) going back to the 90's that still fire up after years of no use.

"Fire up" doesn't mean that data integrity is OK.

[lingyi]

...if you don't fire up the ssd for 1-2 months you have a very strong chance of losing the data on the drive...

Change "months" to years, then it would be close to the truth, modern ssd's claim to be able to hold data for decades without power.

Yes, No, Maybe.

The bigger issue is that all flash based media, SSD, flash drive, SD card tend to fail completely when they do and recovery, which should never be an option (BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP*!) when possible is very expensive, $$$$.

I do have quite a few old hdds (in older systems) going back to the 90's that still fire up after years of no use.

"Fire up" doesn't mean that data integrity is OK.

+1

Spinning doesn't mean it's working properly and the data is intact. If the drive supports it, run a SMART test on the drive to check it's integrity. I use and recommend CrystalDiskInfo if you're on a PC. If anything is yellow or red, don't use the drive for anything important.

*3-2-1 Backup. Three copies of your data. Two local. One offsite physically or cloud in the event something happens to your local drives.

[lingyi]

I still have and use my normal "spinning rust" drive. However a friend of mine sent me some info regarding SSD drives in that they can lose your data if temps get too hot or cold or more so if not powered on for a long time (should you pack the drive away in storage for a few months). I have never heard of such a thing prior. I then read a few articles on google regarding this, but if true why would such a drive be as popular as they are today?

I was thinking about getting an ssd (external) but after hearing the issue with losing data if not powered on often, is making me think twice about it.

Have any of you experienced such a thing with an ssd drive you own? Are these articles more so paranoia or is there some truth to this?

Any flash based media, SSD, flash drive, SD card are not archival. SSD's are popular because they're fast and small, 2.5", 7mm for most home use. Don't know about my spare SSDs, but I and others have definitely had flash drives and SD cards lose data when not used for a while.

Far more important than what you store your data on is to have backups of everything of importance, which to me is everything I have. Hard drives are the lowest cost per TB storage, followed by optical discs, then SSDs.

As I stated in my post above, 3-2-1 Backup is a start, but must be maintained with constant checks, verification and copying to new media every few years for hard drives, longer for optical discs.

[pchan]

Another alternative is cloud storage.
https://clark.com/internet/best-free-cloud-storage/

[mazinz]

Thank you for the replies.
In my case (which I didn't list in the first post), I have been doing Hdd backups for a few years (using clonezilla). Ive also backed up important data (for many, many years) onto (good) optical media and from time to time futher backup data on externals.

Thanks for the reminder of crystaldiscinfo (I also ran crystaldiscmark). Everything came back fine for my current internal drives. Will check externals in a bit

I was still looking at getting an ssd external. My important data is still kept on my main hdd. Externals I mostly use for video project space (if its something large) and items similar to that along with HDD image backups.

My main concerning question was the info related to what I had read with ssds losing data if not powered on in say a month or two. Which now seems like potential "paranoia" reading. So if I do get one for an external, (and to be overly safe), can just make sure its powered on every now and then if I know what I have stored on it wont have me using the drive that often at all

[Cornucopia]

That person who wrote that has little understanding of the physics and engineering of magnetic storage.


Scott

[johns0]

Who cares about how long ssd and hdd will last with important data,with the way technology goes those storage devices will be forgotten with better storage systems,remember when people had floppy disks to store data and cdr's came out.

[lingyi]

Some people think that long term digital storage is one and done, set it and forget it and it will somehow last decades. I and others have decades old files, not because of luck, but because we've constantly checked, verified and copy those files to new storage mediums.

It's not only what you store your data on, it's the environment you store them in. Cool, constant temp, low humidity, no vibration for hard drives, no light for optical disks.