Classicamiga Forum Retro Edition
Thread: SSD data retention
Harrison 15:40 30th August 2023
This is something I hadn't thought about until I was just reading an article.

In the recent series Silo they had removed all traces of old technology and an ancient illegal harddrive was being secretly hidden and accessed.

With a traditional HDD, or other media such as a floppy disk, the data written to the disk will remain on the disk for a long time unless temperature extremes or magnets are involved. So it was possible the data was still intact on that disk.

But if it had been an SSD or a USB drive this might have been very different. I hadn't thought about this but these devices use flash memory that need to occassionally receive power to maintain their stored data on the chips. I just looked this up and estimates are most SSD and M2 devices should store data for 2-5 years without power, but some quote 10-15 years. So definitely not for long term archival storage. For that a traditional HDD is still a more rebust solution.

Had you ever thought about this?

This also means that with more recent gaming systems now using SSDs and games stored on them into the dirtier will mean you need ro turn the systems on regularly to make sure the drives remember the data.
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J T 05:28 31st August 2023
This sounds like an interesting kind of series. But how were they accessing the ancient illegal hard drive without other technology too?
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Harrison 00:51 2nd September 2023
I highly recommend Silo. It's based on a book trilogy by Hugh Howey, starting with the book Wool. It's based on a dystopian future where a disaster has occurred over 100 years ago and everyone is living in a huge underground Silo. It's on Apple TV.

There was meant to have been a mass uprising event 130 years ago that destroyed most objects from the past, as well as the knowledge about what really happened to the world or why they are in the silo. Most technology had been erased or banned. The Silo is however still controlled by ancient computers and they do have terminals in administration, police etc to access the system. An underground hacker in the lower levels managed to access the harddrive using one of these terminals. They have no knowledge of cameras f.ex.
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Demon Cleaner 08:29 2nd September 2023
Originally Posted by Harrison:
I highly recommend Silo. It's based on a book trilogy by Hugh Howey, starting with the book Wool. It's based on a dystopian future where a disaster has occurred over 100 years ago and everyone is living in a huge underground Silo. It's on Apple TV.

There was meant to have been a mass uprising event 130 years ago that destroyed most objects from the past, as well as the knowledge about what really happened to the world or why they are in the silo. Most technology had been erased or banned. The Silo is however still controlled by ancient computers and they do have terminals in administration, police etc to access the system. An underground hacker in the lower levels managed to access the harddrive using one of these terminals. They have no knowledge of cameras f.ex.
Wrong topic? But this got me interested now, has also great reviews on IMdB.
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Harrison 12:14 4th September 2023
As you know I've never been that bothered about staying I topic. Most conversations start in a very different place to where they end. Definitely give Silo a watch.
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Kin Hell 10:30 5th September 2023
Isn't this just another "Pootang" variant!

When I think of Silo.... this kind of storage springs to mind.....

milltec_grain_silos_1920x1280.jpg

& then visions of this on a hot summers day along with the damned stench for days on end....

Muck.jpg



Good old Mechanical Hard Drives eh!
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