Unpowered SSD endurance investigation finds severe data loss and performance issues

Yeah I believe tape is still king there. LTO is working on some 500+ TB tape for the future IIRC.

Strictly speaking, I think paper beats magnetic tape on longevity.

Unfortunately, it loses on data density.

Depends on the threat model and how long do you need the data.

Worked on a place long ago, that anything they needed to save offline from more than a few decades where stored in microfilm, the expectancy there where they would last 80 to 100 years.

Anything else was pretty much tape.

You also take in account the technology avaiability. The more complex is to use, harder will it be to reproduce in the future. Even with tapes, you might want to copy the data to another tape/recorder every decade or two, to keep it on par with the technology.

Tape presents its own share of problems. If not strored in some very particular conditions, like temp, humidity, and others that I can't recall, they can stick to tbe adjacent layers, become brittle, curved, etc...

Technically does, but has a very high rate of failure on recovery, you need to recover the entire drive not just a section, and it can take days or weeks to read it back, vs mere hours.

M-Disc

As we all slowly step back from CD-RW, no quick movements.. or was that all just a bad dream?

They were slc, so the charge ratio was much higher.

Mlc/tlc/qlc drives have to measure a current very precisely, up to 16 values of discrimination, any charge degredation doesn't change a 1 to a 0, but a 3 to a 2 to a 1 and given enough time, a zero.

Also smaller gate dielectric so more leakage.

Those old drives may be using SLC flash. It can have a 20+ year data retention.

I pulled some data off some old Samsung 1TB SSDs that werent powered for 3-4 years without an issue either. I guess they were SLC based on what others are saying.

I guess it's a your mileage may vary situation depending on the exact drive you purchase and probably other factors too.

I'm making a note here

Figured as much, but I wasn't sure if thre nvme flash was of higher quality with potential benefits like what SLC brings. Thank you.