Let’s say civilization collapsed and I still want to run all of my archived games and programs that are on HDD and tapes at good speeds for the foreseeable future. If I get myself a supply of SSD’s and store them in ideal conditions with no data, no power, and stored them in a lead lined container (for pesky cosmic and terrestrial radiation) how long before the components inside the SSD’s would degrade and become unusable. If anyone has any literature that discusses in detail the mechanisms and physics of different SSD’s that would be appreciated also!
30 years at best. 12 years typically. It’s hard to say how modern tech will last until we have more of it for longer
For your purposes, I would archive data onto Optical Media. Like archive disks (M-discs), or maybe you can get away with Blu-ray disks for a bit lower cost. That’s currently the only medium that will survive pretty much anything other than melting (solar radiation can’t ruin etched data)
You can have some SSD’s, but you may lose the data on them overtime, they do “bit rot” after a few years. So you may just want to keep them as a “restore medium” wherein you take the data off your optical disks and load it up onto the SSD’s for a good (fast) experience.
Or maybe do a combination of the two, that way if the data makes it on the SSD’s, then great! But you have some sort of more stable medium to fall back on.
Downside of course, is optical disks are starting to feel pretty small now :(
Ignoring the data integrity.
I personally think SSDs would last longer then a HDD and their are no moving parts.
Tapes last 15-30 years according to the manufacturer but similar to SSDs will degrade as you use them.
I think it will come down to the environment they are in.
seems like it would be better to just continually have extra drives on hand and replenish it every X years then try a ‘one and done’ approach and hope they will work in 50 years. Especially considering any SSD you buy today will be underwhelming in terms of performance and capacity in 20 years (yet alone 50).