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[LUG] OT: Fwd: SSDs lose data if they're not switched on for more than a few days

 

Hi All,

I just had this from a friend.. interesting.

Julian


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: SSDs lose data if they're not switched on for more than a few days








It seems that the consumer-grade SSDs are better than the pro /
enterprise grade ones in this respect, but even those lose data after a
month or so. So if you have a laptop with an SSD instead of a read hard
disk and you don't use it for a month or so, then chances are that some
of your data may be corrupted when you use it next (assuming it hasn't
degraded to the point where it won't boot any more..."

http://www.zdnet.com/article/solid-state-disks-lose-data-if-left-without-power-for-just-a-few-days/

Note that consumer-grade SSDs are designed to retain data for 2 years -
still not a long term storage solution (although to be fair they're WAY
too expensive for this anyway). A lot of people (myself included) fill
up big hard disks with data and then put them into storage. SSDs are
obviously not a good solution for this.

The problem is exacerbated by temperature - according to research
carried out by Seagate, data retention time for any SSD is halved for
every 5C increase in ambient temperature. (So I suppose if you use SSDs
for data archiving (assuming you have more money than sense) then you
need to keep it in the fridge)

USB flash drives seem less vulnerable because the data density is lower
and they're not subject to so many write cycles as an SSD with your OS
on it. (The implication here is that Ext2 would be a better filesystem
for SSDs than Ext3 or Ext4 and so on because these have huge amounts of
disk writes due to logging and journalling).

Real (mechanical) hard disks are still the recommended solution for
long-term high density storage (DVD-R is also good as long as you store
them in a cool, dark, dry place, but they only hold 4.5Gb of data
meaning that you'll need over a thousand of them to hold 4Tb of data,
which at current prices costs more than buying a 4Tb hard disk.
(currently I can get 50 DVD-R locally for Â10. I could probably save
about Â2 buying online but that would still cost Â160 for 1000 discs
(Â200 at Â10 per 50) compared with around Â120 for a 4Tb hard disk. Not
to mention the fact that storing these would take up around 50 times as
much space as a single 3.5" hard disk)

Interesting stuff

-- 



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