Do Internal HDDs & SSDs Degregate More Over Time Without Power?

[Imbellis]

I'm getting a Seagate Archive 8TB to backup content created by me and friends for the next couple of years - and was wondering, do internal HDDs loose their data over long periods of time due to not being connected to power? I don't plan on having the HDD plugged in except for when we're transferring data. From my knowledge SSDs lose data after a while without power (As low as 3 months by some sources).

 

I know it's a stupid question - I don't do HDDs or SSDs...

[TrigrH]

no to HDD

no to SSD

yes to RAM

 

is that clear enough?

[dizmo]

If you're going to self deprecate at least make it amusing.

 

[VolkA]

5 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

no to HDD

no to SSD

yes to RAM

 

is that clear enough?

^^^ As per above.

9 minutes ago, Imbellis said:

I'm getting a Seagate Archive 8TB to backup content created by me and friends for the next couple of years - and was wondering, do internal HDDs loose their data over long periods of time due to not being connected to power? I don't plan on having the HDD plugged in except for when we're transferring data. From my knowledge SSDs loose data after a while without power (As low as 3 months by some sources).

 

I know it's a stupid question - I don't do HDDs or SSDs... nor really monitors/peripherals... and come to think of it GPUs or CPUs either.

 

I also hate how long the title is... sidetracked...

 

[DXMember]

if you don't buy shitty 850 Evo and 840 Evo SSDs from Samsung then you don't  lose any data

[sazrocks]

Actually AFAIK after very long periods of time (8+ years), HDDs can start to experience data rot.

8 minutes ago, DXMember said:

shitty 850 Evo and 840 Evo SSDs from Samsung 

[mariushm]

Hard drives don't lose data, but the magnetic fields that hold the bits on the platters can weaken over time.

For this reason, it's often recommended that once every year or so (or more often), to read the the whole data from the drive and writing it back (or read a few KB at a time and overwrite it with same information) .. basically to "refresh" the bits of information.

Also, if you have the hard drive just sitting on shelves or in safe or somewhere, it's often recommended to just turn it upside down every few months and then back again after a few months and don't store them on their sides. Just like with cassette tapes and data tapes - not sure i can explain it properly - the stuff that keeps the bits can "migrate" extremely slowly and in time, the data tracks can be shifted an extremely tiny amount from their original position. Hard drives have special tracks that are used by read/write heads to lock themselves to the proper tracks and all that but still, if you care about your data you do it.

 

SSDs have smaller retention time (maybe 10-25 years), the lower the manufacturing process the lower the retention time (for example a MLC flash memory chip made on 30nm process will retain data longer than TLC flash memory chip made on 14nm

However, this is not really a problem because unlike hard drives, the data on a SSD doesn't stay in the same location once it's written. The SSD controller will constantly move data around in the SSD for "wear leveling" purposes, so even if you store a movie (a file that won't have bytes changed over time), physically it's still going to be read and written in other parts of the SSD so physical memory cells will constantly have fresh data stored in them - you won't have data for years in the same memory cell, you won't get to the point where a memory cell would lose the charge that holds the bit state - every time that data is shifted somewhere else in the ssd, that 10-25years counter resets -  unless you put the SSD in a safe or on shelves for a few years somewhere.

 

RAM does not retain data, it constantly has to send "pulses" of energy to refresh the information in the memory sticks to hold it there. If you pull out a stick, within maybe 1-2 seconds, most data is lost as in you have no confidence it's the correct data anymore some bits would still be correct, some would be bad,

Of course there's also SRAM (static ram) that holds data for longer time, NVRAM (non volatile ram), eprom and flash used in bios chips..