Source: (3) Do modern SSDs outperform HDDs for long-term storage without power? – Quora
Franklin Veaux
My experience with hard drives dates back many decades.1y
Good grief no.
Modern SSDs are only guaranteed to retain data for 12 months without power. They usually exceed that, of course, but that’s all the specification requires.
All SSDs gradually lose data without power, as the tiny charges in the NAND flash floating gate transistors slowly leak out. Put a hard drive on a shelf and you can still read it in ten years (I’ve tried). Put an SSD on a shelf, especially a modern SSD that stores multiple bits in a single cell, and the data on it will be severely corrupted in ten years.
Irné Barnard
Been using and programming for computers since the mid 80s4y
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Assuming cost is not a factor, are SSDs better than HDDs for long-term storage?
How “long term”? And what exactly do you mean by “long term”?
Are you just going to save the data, then unplug the drive and put it in a time capsule for decades? Or is that drive still being used on a daily basis? Or something in between?
Here’s a tip, neither are perfect. Not is left out in the cold for long, nor worked to the bone each day, and nowhere in between either.
I’d say that if your drive isn’t going to be used for a very long time (as in years) then HDD stands a better chance – IF you can protect it decently, temperatures never beyond its optimal levels, no shocks, no extraneous magnetism, no radiation like direct sunlight, etc. Then you “should” see something between 9 and 20 years, else they can die tomorrow. For SSD, there isn’t actual tests for this metric, but the worst case envisioned and stated as bare minimum standard is 1 year for commercial and 3 months for enterprise.
If the drive is in constant use, then SSDs actually have the upper hand. We do in fact have tests for this to prove how much more workload you can send into SSDs than nearly any HDD. If the workload per time is equal then the SSD should last longer, by quite a margin.
But really, an archive you just lock away somewhere is not good with either of these. Most likely something like long term optical drives are your best bet, something like an M Disc. However, this introduces issues about if such would still have compatible interfaces / drives / etc. at that future date. In most instances it’s more effective as well as secure to keep a running backup being updated regularly – which negates the need to even bother about this longevity.
And no matter what you do, never rely on only one medium. Definitely never only one copy. There is still no guarantee that something untoward would never happen with even the longest living backup medium.
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Reed Tan