PCA Forums

https://www.techpowerup.com/246080/west ... ugh-demand

I feel out of touch even though I try to keep on on current tech. I don't see how there will ever not be a need for hard drives. I get the consumer market is not as good and I would only have SSDs in my computer if it wasn't for the cost. I think I'm just in a minority that likes their media local and not sitting on a cloud somewhere. My current backup for pictures, home movies, and music is sitting at 2 TB.

The cynic in me thinks that the real reason for the plant closure in Malaysia is cost. I bet it's cheaper to make these in Thailand.

You're probably right. You never going to get rid of spinning hard drives for servers it's just too cost-effective. I see a time coming soon when most home systems will have SSDs, certainly laptops.

The biggest problem with ssds is they probably won't have as good a shelf life for data. If an SSD sits on the shelf long enough eventually the charge will dissipitate. It would take a long long time for that to happen to a spinning hard drive so they're still the best archive.

FlyingPenguin wrote:The biggest problem with ssds is they probably won't have as good a shelf life for data. If an SSD sits on the shelf long enough eventually the charge will dissipitate. It would take a long long time for that to happen to a spinning hard drive so they're still the best archive.

I bought some used SSD, but haven't used them. The sit on a shelf. So they will go bad just sitting? Any idea how long that takes?

The drive won't go bad. But if you put some data on an SSD, and store it on a shelf unpowered for 10 years, no one is really sure if you'll be able to read it after the 10 years. The way SSDs work is that memory cells store bits as an electrical charge. Essentially like tiny capacitors. Over time those memory cells will lose their charge (changing bits back to zero). The drive will still be usable, but some files may start to become unreadable and worst case it may need be reformatted if the bits that fade away are part of the file system.

If you store data on a spinning hard drive and put it on a shelf for 10 years (or even 20), it's an absolute guarantee that the data will be readable. The magnetic charge doesn't fade away, unless there's a magnetic field nearby to de-gauss it.

So SSDs (at least for now) are a poor choice for archival storage.

I'm in agreement with FP. For archiving, SSD is not the way to go. Plus I can get so many more terabytes of storage for my NAS units by buying rotational drives. When SSDs come down to where it's the same cost per TB, then I'll consider it for my NAS units.

Yeah I would never use a SSD for archiving. I have 2 4TB spinners that I use. They run at only 5400 rpm. All my other backups are on spinners, except for 2 that are portable drives.