Posted on 05/11/2015 11:50:47 PM PDT by Swordmaker
If you’ve got an unused computer with solid state storage inside, you might want to back up its data before too long.
A new research presentation shows that solid state drives can lose data over time if they aren’t powered on, especially in warmer environments. A powered-off drive in 104 degrees Fahrenheit may start seeing data loss after a couple of weeks.
The information comes from Seagate’s Alvin Cox, who was part of a presentation to the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC). Though the presentation is a couple of months old, it was recently picked up by ZDNet, Slashdot and other sites.
Cox’s presentation shows basic performance requirements for both consumer and enterprise SSDs. It notes that consumer SSDs, when powered-off in 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), should retain data for about a year. Bumping up the temperature by 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) reduces the time of data retention by half. Store your SSD in 131 degree heat, and it might start losing data after a couple of days.
We’re in the process of digging into this more, but a comment on Slashdot notes that these figures are merely what JEDEC requires. It’s entirely possible that a good SSD will fare better, even in warm weather.
The impact on you: In reality, there’s probably not much risk to your primary computer unless you leave it in excessively high heat, in which case you may have other problems to address. But as more devices come with solid state storage as the standard, you may end up with some older computers whose data will deteriorate after a couple years' neglect.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
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For your lists. . . this may be important as we move into a summer of “GLO-BULL WARMING”
So you mean those two 386’s I have in the shed, meaning to get around to go through them to see what I still might want, may have degraded? It’s only been about 13 years - I should try to get around to that in the next year or so.
“If you’ve got an unused computer with solid state storage inside...”
Oops - I should have read it more carefully. I’m good. Mine are outside - in the shed!
I still see no reason to move to a SSD.
Despite the beauty of the new MacBook, I’m sticking with my heavy 15”.
I think the best of both worlds is a combo drive with booting from an SSD and data on a good quality, high capacity Hard drive. Makes for a very snappy system.
Unless you do a lot of traveling. . . I recall lugging my old MacBook Pro around airports in a leather briefcase with all the accessories. . . The computer alone was six and a half pounds. By the time you ran to catch a connecting flight it felt like sixty-five! A two pound MacBook would be delightful.
Don’t leave your notebook in the car in warm climates?
When I flew I would have the computer in a backpack and hand carry a Norman 2000 studio flash power unit in the other hand. 55lbs. The Computer was light as a feather.
Funny how things come out too.late. I call shenanigans!!!
I’m not surprised. ECM and ECU modules use solid state memory for storing fuel trim and other data which is why if you leave your battery disconnected long enough, your ideal fuel trim settings dump back to factory default. It’s even why computers need a CMOS battery.
I just upgraded to SSD on all five of my comps. It's like having five brand new computers. Spend $100 for a 250 gig SSD, load all your programs onto it and boots and program launches happen like lightning. I will never go back to spinning disks.
One of my recently upgraded boxes is my carputer residing in the trunk of my car. I go up to a week at a time without powering it up and that trunk can get very hot during the summer months so this article caught my attention. I do keep everything on it backed up, though.
That’s what I do on my Windows2000 home server. (Now with PCI-SATA I! SATA II/III only available on PCI-X, PCI64 controllers, before moving to PCIe, which supports all current SATA modes)
I finally broke down and spent a little money to replace my computer. That is exactly what I did. A motherboard with an i3 and 4G of memory. A 128G SSD to be / and boot linux, and /home on a 1T spinning disk.
Thanks to Swordmaker for the ping!!
Yep, although I'm somewhat annoyed at myself for not giving you and ShadowAce an extra "for your lists" ping after the main list ping. Oh well, sorry about that...
Regarding the SSDs and heat, I'm actually not real sure what I think about this "issue".
If the problem was one that most users would encounter in normal use, we'd have heard about it in spades before now.
Something about this smells fishy -- not "untrue", but overblown.
Well, my low-duty-cycle laptop with an SSD for the past year has been okay, but it doesn't get hot... I guess I'm one of those who's in line to find out.
THIS IS WHY GOD GAVE US DUMP(8) AND TIME MACHINE AND ACRONIS AND OTHER FULL-IMAGE BACKUP TOOLS.
Know what I mean? SH*T HAPPENS. All kinds of sh*t. This potential problem is only one kind. If you have a computer and you don't do backups you are asking for it bigtime.
So far, I'm not turning in my SSDs -- I like the quiet speed and low power. And I do backups already anyway.
Sort of like not starting the new computer cars for a week leaves them dead/
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