Those old drives may be using SLC flash. It can have a 20+ year data retention.
Comment on Unpowered SSD endurance investigation finds severe data loss and performance issues
thejml@lemm.ee 6 days agoI actually just pulled some files off of one from 2004-ish. No issues. Found another one from 2008 about a year ago that had no issues as well. Not sure why… maybe because they were so much lower capacity? Like, one was 64MB and that was huge back then.
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
lemmyingly@lemm.ee 4 days ago
I pulled some data off some old Samsung 1TB SSDs that werent powered for 3-4 years without an issue either. I guess they were SLC based on what others are saying.
I guess it’s a your mileage may vary situation depending on the exact drive you purchase and probably other factors too.
InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 6 days ago
They were slc, so the charge ratio was much higher.
Mlc/tlc/qlc drives have to measure a current very precisely, up to 16 values of discrimination, any charge degredation doesn’t change a 1 to a 0, but a 3 to a 2 to a 1 and given enough time, a zero.
Also smaller gate dielectric so more leakage.