Unpowered SSD endurance investigation finds data loss and performance issues

You may not know it, but SSDs will lose data after a period of time if they are simply left unplugged, which can be a serious threat to your data if you store backups or precious files on unplugged SSDs. A year-two update on the how long can SSDs store data unpowered video series is another reminder about the importance of regularly refreshing your backups with a bit of juice. The tests consist of storing data on an SSD and then leaving it unplugged for years to see the impact on the stored data. As a reminder, an SSD's endurance rating is calculated based on how long it can store data if left unplugged after a certain amount of data has been written, hence the importance of this testing. TechTuber HTWingNut is back with a report on his modest experiment involving a quartet of SATA SSDs. The key finding was that the two-year-old, well-worn drive exhibited noticeable performance degradation and was affected by a handful of corrupt files. These are signs that this particular SSD was on ... Read full article.