My father told me he wanted to make USB flash drives of all the scanned and digitized family photos and other assorted letters and mementos. He planned to distribute them to all family members hoping that at least one set would survive. When I explained that they ought to be recipes to new media every N number of years or risk deteriorating or becoming unreadable (like a floppy disk when you have no floppy drive), he was genuinely shocked. He lost interest in the project that he’d thought was so bullet proof.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -8
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Werent we talking about usb flash drives?
      Since usb flash drives use usb, I think we can keep using them to store data in long term, rather than using floppy, cd or other analogic archive.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        13
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        The problem is that USB flash drives don’t keep their data intact for very long when they’re powered down. It lasts long enough for everyday use, but not even as long as a hard disk for archival.

        • Dave.
          link
          fedilink
          English
          82 months ago

          when they’re powered down.

          There’s no periodic cell refresh in flash memory like there is in DRAM. When USB sticks are plugged in, all you are doing is powering up the flash chip and interface ICs.

          You’d have to read a block then write it back to actually refresh the stored charges in the cells.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            22 months ago

            Do SSDs do that automatically in the background, or is all the data I’m not actively refreshing gradually rotting away?

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          42 months ago

          Oh, gotcha. Was thinking about the peripheral type support rather than its actual lifetime.