[ale] [OT] Lifespan of Storage Devices

[alan at alanlee.org]

Any flash storage is bad for long term storage.  The floating gate weakens over
time if not periodically refreshed by the internal controller.  And the more
program/erase cycles and to a lesser extent read cycles on a gate, the weaker it
gets with respect to power off retention.

Of course all mediums cave to entropy over time.  However flash has a faster
curve than most physical mediums.
The main rule of backups though is backup to multiple medium and routinely
verify all copies.  No mechanism can survive passive maintenance.

-Alan



On July 28, 2012 at 12:59 PM Andrew Wade <andrewiwade at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am working on archiving some of my pictures/videos/etc. through the years.
>   I'm trying to decide on what storage media would be best for this.
> 
> The main consensus that I've seen on the internet is that the optical disc
> (Dvd-DL) is still going to be the winner.  The problem is that once you get a
> scratch on it, you may not be able to access that 1MB picture.   I've had this
> happen before.
> 
> What do you all think about the following mediums for 10+ year  (and the tech
> format itself still being around - like zip disk, etc.)
> 
> SDHC/XD  Memory Cards  (Fat32)
> Optical Disk (DVD +-R, CD, DVD-DL)
> Hard Drive (Put in storage; has to be in a filesystem that supports >4GB for
> individual files)
> USB Flash Drive(s) (Fat 32)
> 
> and any others.
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