Bit rot... a Reality?
One of my friends introduced me to a new concept the other day and being a research junkie I immediately went on the interwebs to find out more but came up pretty dry. Is bit rot something I should worry about? I have lots of FLAC music files and 1080P movies on my PC. I'm worried that bit rot may degrade my files over time.
Q1. I did once have a very (about 6 years) old word doc get corrupted and I lost some very important info that I was logging in that document, could that have be an example of bit rot?
Q2. Besides my media and documents can this phenomenon ruin programs or my Windows 7 OS?
Q3. Does Windows 7 have systems in place to monitor bit rot and refresh data as needed or is there a program out there that would do that.
Q4. My friend tells me he refreshes his data every three years on his archived hard drives that sit unused. Is he overkilling it?
Please put your answers under the relevant question.
Thanks all!
In some cases what you call 'bit rot' could happen. It will never happen on a hard drive though.
A1. If it was on a hard drive, no. Hundreds of different things can cause file corruption. A sector on your drive could have went bad. Your power may have flickered while it was attempting to save the file. Heck, if you went by your tower and bumped it while it was on, that could even theoretically kill the file.
A2. No, it is not something you have to worry about.
A3. No, because in reality it is not an issue, and even if it was, there is no program that could fix it.
A4. Yes, your friend is mis-informed and has absolutely no clue what he is talking about.
The phenomenon you call 'bit rot' is something that can affect flash based memory like SSD's or USB flash drives though. Flash based memory essentially stores a small charge in its cells where an empty cell would read a 0 and a cell with voltage reads a 1. Over time if flash based memory is not used, this voltage will slowly leak and dissipate until the entire drive reads 0. For this to happen you would have to not use the memory device for more than 10 years. The simple act of plugging it into a power source will allow it to refresh its stored voltages essentially. Hard drives physically store data with magnetic fields, short of damage to the drive or exposure to extreme magnetic fields it will keep its data unaffected infinitely.
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