can data on an SSD degrade after a long time?

[bilsch01]

I think I read a while ago that data on flash drives and SSDs
deteriorates after a long time. Is that true?
I intend to archive data from DVDs (data in VIDEO_TS folders) for a long
time. If flash drives and SSDs have data deterioration over a long time
I definitely don't want to use those. I have some external USB drives
that I believe are actual HDDs: a 320GB drive and a 2TB drive. They are
both rather old, but not used very much. But I may want to get an
additional external HDD specifically for saving the VIDEO_TS folders. Do
you think I can assume a product called a 'hard drive' is not an SSD?
Also I would appreciate any suggestions you might have.
TIA. Bill S.

[bilsch01]

I understand now. Don't bother responding.

Thanks.

[Computer Nerd Kev]

bilsch01 <use...@writer.com> wrote:
> I think I read a while ago that data on flash drives and SSDs
> deteriorates after a long time. Is that true?

In theory, yes. In practice I'm quite curious about the practical
lifetime because cheap flash devices seem to retain data for at
least ten years pretty easily without frequent use. The trouble is
that the manufacturers don't like to guarantee anything.

> I intend to archive data from DVDs (data in VIDEO_TS folders) for a long
> time. If flash drives and SSDs have data deterioration over a long time
> I definitely don't want to use those. I have some external USB drives
> that I believe are actual HDDs: a 320GB drive and a 2TB drive. They are
> both rather old, but not used very much. But I may want to get an
> additional external HDD specifically for saving the VIDEO_TS folders. Do
> you think I can assume a product called a 'hard drive' is not an SSD?

That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
personal experience.

I saw your reply that you no longer want a response, but you
frustratingly didn't explain your conclusions. If you found a good
reference to practical flash data retention times in common
devices then I'd be interested to find out myself.

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[bilsch01]

> I saw your reply that you no longer want a response, but you
> frustratingly didn't explain your conclusions. If you found a good
> reference to practical flash data retention times in common
> devices then I'd be interested to find out myself.
>

I didn't find any reference that I know is good, I just decided based on
browsing, that the answer is YES: flash and SSD degrade with time.

However thank you for your impression that flash drive degradation is
unusual for maybe 10 years.

My interest has now branched off into:
Speed of writing and reading files several GBs in size.
Also want something that's much faster than 35 minutes to copy the 256
GB SSD in my laptop. The laptop has a USB 3.2 port.

I use linux dd copy utility.

[Jeff Jonas]

>I use linux dd copy utility.

I hope you use a large blocksize such as
bs=1M
Have no fear, the last partial block is written properly

Are you using dd from raw device to raw device?
That has the DIS-advantage of copying unused blocks
and copying over any file system corruption too.
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[bilsch01]

I believe I tried bs=1M but found it no faster than bs=4096, or maybe
there was actually some problem with bs=1M, I don't remember now.

Here it is:

mkdir -p /mnt/sdb1 (creating a mount point)
mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
mkdir -p /mnt/sdb1/images (if don't already have that dir)
dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/mnt/sdb1/images/asyymmdd.img bs=4096
conv=notrunc,noerror

[Computer Nerd Kev]

When I do disk image based backups I pipe the output of dd to gzip
which is most useful for compressing the unused blocks down to
almost nothing so the image size is about equal to the used disk
space.

dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror | gzip -c > /mnt/sdb1/images/asyymmdd.img

Gzip runs fast enough that it's unlikely to slow down the process,
but you could also use xz for better compression of the real data,
or the new ones like zstd.

[Paul]

On 9/17/2023 6:41 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
> But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
> months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
> drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
> called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
> personal experience.

Modern drives land the heads on a plastic landing ramp.

There is no possibility of stiction.

The drive seems to have enough energy left inside,
to land the heads on the ramp, when there is an abrupt power fail.

The last drive I have here, where the heads are stuck to the
platter, is 250MB or so. That drive might be inside a Mac Quadra 650.
The drive might have been made by Quantum. The computer is buried in
the junk room, and I have no plans for retrieval :-) There would be
no landing ramps inside that drive, and likely, a single platter.
Because the drive is not that tall.

In the picture here, where the ramp would be, is a filter-pak instead.
Look at the beautiful airflow design of this thing. The air has a
"race track" around the outside of the drive, and two filter packs.
When you open a failed drive, those filter packs used to be black-as-tar
with material that's come off the surface of the platter. I could never
understand, how the drive could operate, up to the day of failure,
with that much crude circulating in it. The filter packs here, are
clean as can be, and this drive was trashed for fun.

https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-6bkt1ygjlf/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/482687/560372/TB25S0261-lg__06957.1537275638.jpg?c=2?imbypass=on

Paul

[Rod Speed]

Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote

> bilsch01 <use...@writer.com> wrote:

>> I intend to archive data from DVDs (data in VIDEO_TS folders) for a long
>> time. If flash drives and SSDs have data deterioration over a long time
>> I definitely don't want to use those. I have some external USB drives
>> that I believe are actual HDDs: a 320GB drive and a 2TB drive. They are
>> both rather old, but not used very much. But I may want to get an
>> additional external HDD specifically for saving the VIDEO_TS folders. Do
>> you think I can assume a product called a 'hard drive' is not an SSD?

yes

> That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
> But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
> months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
> drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
> called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
> personal experience.

That hasnt been a problem for decades. That was due to
the heads landing on the media and sometimes getting
stuck. Drives have retracted the heads on power down
for decades now so that doesnt happen anymore.

[Rod Speed]

Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote

> Computer Nerd Kev wrote

>> That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
>> But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
>> months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
>> drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
>> called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
>> personal experience.

> Modern drives land the heads on a plastic landing ramp.

That isnt the heads themselves, its the head carraige system.

> There is no possibility of stiction.

Correct.

> The drive seems to have enough energy left inside, to landthe heads on

> the ramp, when there is an abrupt power fail.

There is actually a retract spring.

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote
>

>> That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
>> But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
>> months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
>> drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
>> called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
>> personal experience.
>
> That hasnt been a problem for decades. That was due to
> the heads landing on the media and sometimes getting
> stuck. Drives have retracted the heads on power down
> for decades now so that doesnt happen anymore.

The trick of shaking them side to side when they won't spin up
after a long period of disuse has still worked for me on drives
made within the last couple of decades. Maybe it's not the heads
sticking anymore, but it fixes something.

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[Rod Speed]

Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>> Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote

>>> That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
>>> But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
>>> months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
>>> drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
>>> called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
>>> personal experience.

>> That hasnt been a problem for decades. That was due to
>> the heads landing on the media and sometimes getting
>> stuck. Drives have retracted the heads on power down
>> for decades now so that doesnt happen anymore.

> The trick of shaking them side to side when they won'tspin up after a
> long period of disuse has still workedfor me on drives made within the
> last couple of decades.

What size drives ?

Never needed to do that and I have dozens of 1TB
drives which I used to use keep the free to air TV
recordings on that I never did get around to watching
until I ended up using 20TB drives. Dont bother
to record anymore, watch streamed instead now.

> Maybe it's not the heads sticking anymore,

Can't be stiction because heads have not landed
on the platters for much longer than that now.

> but it fixes something.

Bet it is just a poor connection in the power plug.

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote
>> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>>> Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote
>
>>>> That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
>>>> But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
>>>> months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
>>>> drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
>>>> called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
>>>> personal experience.
>
>>> That hasnt been a problem for decades. That was due to
>>> the heads landing on the media and sometimes getting
>>> stuck. Drives have retracted the heads on power down
>>> for decades now so that doesnt happen anymore.
>
>> The trick of shaking them side to side when they won'tspin up after a
>> long period of disuse has still workedfor me on drives made within the
>> last couple of decades.
>
> What size drives ?

3.5", I don't remember that fixing a broken 2.5" drive. Or it looks
like you meant storage capacity in which case probably around 200GB
or less because I haven't delt with that many bigger drives.

> Never needed to do that and I have dozens of 1TB
> drives which I used to use keep the free to air TV
> recordings on that I never did get around to watching
> until I ended up using 20TB drives. Dont bother
> to record anymore, watch streamed instead now.

The biggest drives that I have are a couple of used 500GB SATA
drives and a bunch of 600GB SCSI drives, but I haven't found a use
for any of them yet. I keep videos at low resoution and quality so
they take up much less space.

>> Maybe it's not the heads sticking anymore,
>
> Can't be stiction because heads have not landed
> on the platters for much longer than that now.
>
>> but it fixes something.
>
> Bet it is just a poor connection in the power plug.

I check that first.

[Rod Speed]

Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote
>>> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>>>> Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote

>>>>> That depends on how knowledgeable the person/business selling it is.
>>>>> But is a HDD better for this? If it's sitting powered-off for a few
>>>>> months between use then the machanical parts can sieze up. Seagate
>>>>> drives were once thought to be particularly affected by this,
>>>>> called "stiction". I suspect it affects other brands too based on
>>>>> personal experience.

>>>> That hasnt been a problem for decades. That was due to
>>>> the heads landing on the media and sometimes getting
>>>> stuck. Drives have retracted the heads on power down
>>>> for decades now so that doesnt happen anymore.

>>> The trick of shaking them side to side when they won'tspin up after a
>>> long period of disuse has still workedfor me on drives made within the
>>> last couple of decades.

>> What size drives ?

> 3.5",

I meant capacity.

> I don't remember that fixing a broken 2.5" drive. Or it looks

> like you meant storage capacity in which case probably around200GB or

> less because I haven't delt with that many bigger drives.

That would have been a much older drive than you said.

>> Never needed to do that and I have dozens of 1TB
>> drives which I used to use keep the free to air TV
>> recordings on that I never did get around to watching
>> until I ended up using 20TB drives. Dont bother
>> to record anymore, watch streamed instead now.

> The biggest drives that I have are a couple of used 500GB SATA
> drives

Those would have been much older drives than you said.

> and a bunch of 600GB SCSI drives, butI haven't found a use for any of
> them yet.

The only use for dinosaurs like that is door
stops and they are too light to be viable for that.

> I keep videos at low resoution and quality so
> they take up much less space.

Makes more sense to have a coupld of 20TB drives now

[Computer Nerd Kev]

I said "drives made within the last couple of decades", in response
to your claim "That hasnt been a problem for decades".

Two decades (which you implied by using "decades" plural) means
after 2003. I've got a pile of 40GB IDE drives printed with
manufacture dates in 2004. In fact I was keeping my whole permanent
video file collection on one of them until a few years ago when I
started downloading more stuff because the supply of worthwhile
viewing on TV seemed to dry up. I think the one I'm using now
is 160GB, but it is getting near full and I'll probably switch to
one of the 500GB drives soon, although switching to a large
capacity memory stick is a tempting alternative now.

I don't think I've had a HDD made within the last ten years come
back from the dead after a shake-around, but like I said I haven't
had nearly so much experience with drives that new.

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