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People said that harddisk need to be refreshed to prevent bit rot by format the drive, then recopy the files back.

I have external hard disk, and use it as backup purpose once in two weeks. Am I need to "refresh" it just like people said?

How about usb thumb drive? Need refresh too? What I know is we need to plug in flash drive periodically to prevent data lost. But I dont know if we need to format and recopy data (refresh) or not.

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    AFAIK It's only a thing for non-magnetic / "charge-based" drive (e.g. NAND-based drive), and you can't "refresh" (the data on) an HDD anyway. (Oh, well, if you are talking about rewriting everything instead of just plugging it in, then it might be a slightly different story.) – Tom Yan Apr 19 '22 at 16:32
  • What "people" said this? – Mokubai Apr 19 '22 at 16:44
  • @TomYan so, rewritting can prevent bit rot or not? –  Apr 20 '22 at 02:17
  • @Mokubai people in some forums –  Apr 20 '22 at 02:18
  • Nowadays flagging questions as duplicate, opinion-based or off-topic happens a bit too fast and too often for my taste. This question is a good example. It is *not* a duplicate, at least not in the way claimed: The *linked question* asks whether bit rot can happen when a disk is powered off too long (i.e. whether a disk must be regularly turned on to prevent bit rot). In contrast, *this question* asks whether it is necessary to regularly copy all data from a disk, then re-copy it back to prevent bit rot. This is a fundamental difference which the people who closed should have noticed. – Binarus Apr 21 '22 at 19:07

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