[BBLISA] Whatever happened to Seagate?

[Edward Ned Harvey (bblisa4)]

> From: bblisa [mailto:bblisa-bounces at bblisa.org] On Behalf Of Nahum
> Shalman
> 
> Just make sure you regularly apply power... Apparently SSDs can start losing
> data in as little as three months without power:
> https://twitter.com/bsdphk/status/596302795613011969  -
> >   https://blog.korelogic.com/blog/2015/03/24#ssds-evidence-storage-
> issues

Interesting - 

It's interesting in that it's so poorly written and you accept it without question. If there is some reality to the idea of needing to apply power to SSD's occasionally, I would love to hear it, but here are my comments for now:

First off, SSD's use flash memory. Unlike DRAM, flash memory does not have a refresh cycle - so even if you power on the drive - nothing is going to change in the storage cell. My point is that powering on the drive won't actually *do* anything. We know the flash memory has a shelf life (everything does) but powering on the drive won't change that. If you're concerned, you might have to read the whole contents of the drive, and then write it all back again to the drive; THAT would actually refresh the memory cells. Not merely powering it on and leaving it idle and then powering it off.

The article referenced sounds techy and smart. And I'm not disputing that SSD's have shelf life (everything does.) And I'm not disputing that changes in temperature affect their shelf life (I haven't checked; but probably true.) But the sentence "They need consistent access to a power source in order for them to not lose data over time" and "A stored SSD, without power, can start to lose data" are literally the only sentences that say anything about power being required. They then go on to talk about temperature and environmental factors, but they never offer any explanation as to why power would be necessary, or how it would mitigate any problems.