“SSDs Can Lose Data After a Week Without Power” Not Entirely Accurate

Last week, we reported on a study that seemed to claim that unpowered solid state drives, when exposed to warm conditions, could lose data within a matter of days. Now, the author of the presentation has spoken out, suggesting that his data has been misinterpreted.

PC World had a conversation with Seagate’s Kent Smith and Alvin Cox, during which the pair confirmed that reports of SSD failures had been exaggerated. Cox, the man behind the original presentation, said, “I wouldn’t worry about [losing data]. This all pertains to end of life. As a consumer, an SSD product or even a flash product is never going to get to the point where it’s temperature-dependent on retaining the data.”

Smith agreed, saying, “People have misunderstood the data that they’re looking at.”

Cox’s presentation, written while he was chairman of a JEDEC committee, was designed to help data centres understand what could happen to SSDs once they had hit the end of their life cycles. However, when the report was publicised recently, it was assumed that the data regarded new SSDs. The bottom line is, if you’ve got a new SSD that is within its lifespan – which, unless you are constantly read/writing large amounts of data to it, could be a lifetime – you have nothing to worry about.

Thank you PC World for providing us with this information.