ssd vs hdd for long term storage/archive-memory loss?curious. I recent

I recently read an article where the idea of ssd possibly not working after a few years of not being installed/powered on since they use electricity. chips may lose memory. nothing has been disproven or proven.

I also prefer my drives smaller at 1-2tb in size for wedding photography pics I do. and ssd are decent prices. im usually buying lexar or seagate ssd.


im going to make it a point to load all my ssd once a year to see theyre all fine. better safe then sorry I think

rocketman122 said:

I recently read an article where the idea of ssd possibly not working after a few years of not being installed/powered on since they use electricity. chips may lose memory.

True, but HDDs can have problems that SSDs wouldn't experience ... motors can fail, bearings can stick, etc. And SSDs are more durable in the face of physical abuse, such as dropping/bumping while powered on.

OTOH, HDDs have a higher probability of repair or data recovery if they start getting wonky. Nevertheless, if you've got a good backup plan you won't have to worry about that because you'll have an alternate backup anyway.

Have you read this BackBlaze article?

Question 3: Are SSDs good for long-term storage?
Answer: SSDs, like hard drives, are meant to be used. An external drive stuffed into a closet for a couple of years is never a good thing, and it doesn’t matter whether it is an SSD or HDD inside. The evidence of whether an SSD will fare better than a HDD in such a circumstance is anecdotal at best. Still, it is better to use an external drive as a backup of your computer as part of your backup plan—just don’t make it your only backup.

For the sake of data longevity, I'd stick with technologies that don't try to overlap data on top of other data. The choice of SSD vs HDD is less important.

In the case of HDDs, that means avoiding SMR and sticking to CMR drives. In the case of SSDs, I'd stick with MLC or TLC cells and avoid QLC and 3D NAND drives. (SLC may be marginally better than MLC but is not economical -- and overkill for your purposes, IMHO.)

rocketman122 said:

I also prefer my drives smaller at 1-2tb in size for wedding photography pics I do. and ssd are decent prices.

Since a proper backup plan consists of multiple copies, you might consider pairing that with a large HDD -- e.g., an 8TB HDD to duplicate four 2TB SSDs. If any single drive fails, you'll have the means to regenerate it.

rocketman122 said:

im going to make it a point to load all my ssd once a year to see theyre all fine. better safe then sorry I think

That's a good plan. Personally, I think annually is a bit excessive ... I refresh my backups about every 3-5 years.

However, don't just power them up, you actually need to read them to exercise the cells. Use something like Spinrite or Diskfresh for that.

samuria said:

I have an ssd used daily over 7 years old still perfect

(emphasis mine)

That's a different question from that which rocketman122 is asking. He's asking how long data will remain readable when not in use. It's known that SSD cells will gradually lose their charge if not periodically refreshed.

I have been using hard drives more than 30 years and SSDs for more than 7 years. I lost track of how many hard drives have failed. It might be 20 or more. None of my SSDs have failed. You have to accept the fact that all drives no matter type will eventually fail. To prevent loss of data you need to make regular backups. You also need to keep really important data backed up even more often.

It's a good question.

I used to store backup disks offline (on shelf). and I had noticed one of them (Maxtor 100GB), its some data had lost/corrupted. couldn't read out any more. while most of disk still was good.
I didn't investigate the failure. just backup the data good to another disk, then removed the Maxtor 100GB disk.
SSD is relatively new. most of my SSD are online (in a computer or a NAS). I haven't noticed the problem so far.
it's better store these backup disks on a NAS, or a computer. once a while, power on and use the data some time. that's my present practice. add new photo pics, add new tax files, add new other data, , every year, some work on these data disks.

note. my NAS is NOT 24-hr online. it's kind of every week/month in use once.