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Comment by alxmdev | Hacker News Reader

Exciting times indeed, just type "ssd" in your favorite search box. I'm about to upgrade to a 512GB SSD that costs half what an SSD half its size used to cost 5 years ago! Starting this year, I'm considering getting a low-end 120GB for $25 every year on January 1st to use as a write-once backup for all my work.

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As I understand, SSD would be an especially poor choice for this - an SSD left unpowered for an extended period will begin to experience data durability issues. The firmware of a powered SSD will mitigate this issue by engaging in periodic refresh activity.

This is a classic use case for tape. LTO drives support reading up to 2 generations earlier, i.e. an LTO-7 drive can read an LTO-6 tape. By not using the latest standard, you should be able to find cheaper drives, but the risk becomes always being able to find a (working) tape drive that is capable of reading your specific tape.

All of a sudden spinning rust drives start to look pretty good...

What about a Industrial SLC SD Card ? Like that:

https://swissbit.com/products/nand-flash-products/cards/sd-m...

Is it safe for backup or same problem?

My understanding is that SLC is seen as safer, and lower densities are also seen as safer. Beyond that I don't know for sure.

I imagine that even an "industrial" grade flash card is still engineered with the assumption that it will be turned on for a while every now and then.

Flash cells leak and degrade. Some firmwares also have bugs - not refreshing cells frequent enough even if the drive is powered. The leaks are even worse on high-write-endurance enterprise drives. Make sure you read the specs and don't expect to be able to read without errors a SSD that was offline for 1-2 years.

> write-once backup for all my work.

I'd expect USB drives to be more durable. Would be nice to know.

edit: i cannot arithmetic today, or sanity check my arithmetic. sorry.

sigh.

I'm not sure how you got that $25 = 41 years of 120GB of storage on Backblaze.

Their current pricing appears to be $0.005/GB-month... which would be $295.20 for 41 years of 120GB of storage.

> i wouldn't trust a cheap SSD to still work in 41 years

I wouldn't trust almost any company to still exist in 41 years, including Backblaze. Preserving data over that length of time will probably require active management of the data in some form or another. DVD or Blu-ray discs might last that long... but it's hard to trust any storage medium to last for 41 years. Modern storage technology just hasn't existed that long.

> I'm not sure how you got that ...

sigh. bad at arithmetic today. sorry.

> I wouldn't trust almost any company to still exist in 41 years, including Backblaze

as i mention in the reply to the sibling comment, the backblaze corporate entity doesn't need to last.

> DVD or Blu-ray discs might last that long... but it's hard to trust any storage medium to last for 41 years

on an anecdotal note, i put a bunch of data on DVDs circa 2004-2008, and tried to retrieve it all spring 2018. all of the inexpensive DVDs were garbage. only the most expensive survived, and even those had a few bit errors.

Don't write optical media at the maximum possible speed, reasonably protect it from light, and it will last much longer. I always did that and haven't lost a disk yet. I'd need to recheck a few really old ones, though...

And don’t stack them one on top of another. I recall reading that added weight on the disks (common when they’re stacked horizontally) can result in data loss because of the dye changing structurally. Store then standing sideways, and as much as possible, closer to a 90° vertical angle.

> that same $25 buys you 41 years of storage on backblaze

What. I just checked backblaze, it was $5 a month, or $50 a year.

do you trust a startup still to exist in 41 years, and to honor your plan that long?

(my arithmetic was wrong, so 41 years was garbage, but addressing the more general point: )

the corporate entity that is currently doing business as backblaze doesn't need to last 41 years, or even 41 more days. the stored data is all a valuable stream of revenue from customers who'd like it preserved, so unless their whole model is unsustainable, i'd expect the company to be sold to/absorbed by another business.

as for honoring the plan, i don't think cloud storage rates are going to go _up_. so maybe they wouldn't want me as a customer at some point, but so long as they're taking consumer business i can't imagine the pennies per GB*month going up unless there is some sort of massive societal upheaval.

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