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Came across this today: https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22055773&cid=62881673

How long will current SSDs retain the data without being attached to power? I've had experiences in the past of them fairly quickly just forgetting everything. And I don't know where to look to find ratings on this.

Is this just some random insane person's driveling nonsense, or does he have "flesh on his legs" in regards to this, so to speak? I certainly never heard of this before.

L Velho
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1 Answers1

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When unpowered, SSDs indeed do have a limited data retention period. This varies a lot depending on the SSD type and on the temperatures during operation and when unpowered.

For instance, a consumer grade SSD operated at 40°C and left unpowered at 30°C had an estimated retention period of 1 year on this page: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention (EDIT: this estimation however corresponds to a worst case scenario, where the SSD has already reached its theoretical TBW)

It is better to operate a SSD at "high" temperatures (this is the opposite for the HDDs!) and left it unpowered at low temperatures. In any case, SSDs are hardly usable for archiving...

PierU
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  • This is genuinely shocking to me, and completely ruins all my plans of going "SSD only" for my storage disks. I have seriously never heard this before today, and this in my mind makes me not want to use SSDs at all except possibly for the system disk (very redundantly backed up). What if I'm in a car accident and can't use my computer for over a year? I come back and it's all gone... – L Velho Sep 15 '22 at 07:12
  • You skipped the part that says "Remember that the figures presented here are for a drive that has already passed its endurance rating, so for new drives the data retention is considerably higher, typically over ten years for MLC NAND based SSDs" – u1686_grawity Sep 15 '22 at 07:31
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    Any drive containing personal data should be backed up, and one of the backups should be on a HDD. My personal strategy includes a full backup on a HDD twice a year, and after that I do no longer access this HDD: this is actually archiving. I buy used HDDs on ebay for that. – PierU Sep 15 '22 at 07:31
  • @user1686 I didn't miss that part. Some people have in operation some SSDs that have been used a lot and are far from "brand new". However I should have stated that the estimated retention period corresponds to a worst case scenario... – PierU Sep 15 '22 at 07:46
  • @LVelho Backups. Ideally using the 3-2-1 strategy: 3 copies of everything on 2 types of media, 1 of them in a different location. You don't need a car accident and a forced one year break. Accidentally deleting an important file is enough. Or a ransomware attack. Or a random hardware failure. Or a power spike. Or spilling coffee on your laptop. Or… – gronostaj Sep 15 '22 at 07:58