Do you trust consumer grade SSD to store back up?

[Rick Law]

I go back and forth with this one.  I have a couple of Crucial MX500 (500gb SSD) and a few Seagate Momentus (500gb  spinning disc).  Both are easy to connect up to do back-up, but from experience of > a decade ago (40 gb SSD), I found myself having difficulty trusting the SSD for long term (5 to 10 yrs) back-up.

What are your experiences with consumer grade SSD for long term (over 5 years) backup?

[Zucca]

The first SSDs that show up on the market (2013-2014) were absolutely a horror movie!
Today things are different, they are reliable and all is good.

That said SSD or not there is only one golden rule: do regular backup on your data.

I have multiple backup on SSD, spinning and cloud for my crap.

[rdl]

I doubt they're worse than anything else. They might be better. Right now what I distrust the least is good quality spinners. But I would say SSD is a very close second. I am using both for long term storage but I don't have any history yet with SSD.

[bdunham7]

What are your experiences with consumer grade SSD for long term (over 5 years) backup?

I wouldn't rely on broad classifications to make such decisions, I'd look at the historical failure rates of specific models.  For me SSDs are only Samsung and not the old 840 series.  HDDs are various HGST models, the Samsung (now Seagate) 2TB 2.5" M9T (for laptop internal backup) and for big non-critical stuff (media) the 8TB Samsung 3.5" drives shucked from external enclosures.  The last are low-power, low-RPM and SMR, but so far so good. YMMV and it might pay to read the reliability reports from BackBlaze.

As far as time and potential bitrot, I've been running a Samsung 830 for 10 years and that computer is now only used occasionally.  No issues or errors.

[iMo]

What are your experiences with consumer grade SSD for long term (over 5 years) backup?

It depends on the SSD technology.. With newer SSDs the endurance (number of writes per flash cell) decreases significantly (while the flash cell density increases significantly). You have to doublecheck the flash technology of your SSD. Moreover the flash memory cells consist of Leyden jars where the charge slowly evaporates, thus you have to consider the max flash cell retention time (usually 10 years).

[Twoflower]

SSDs has some problems with storage if the device isn't powered up regular. The flash cells don't hold the electrons forever trapped. If you want to use SSDs for long therm storage: Store them cold and power them up every now and then to allow the drive to refresh the data. Some more information can be found here: https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/is-ssd-good-for-long-term-storage.html Including some information about how long the data is stored under certain temperatures.

[iMo]

I don't trust any media for backups. I limit myself to projects and work that don't require backups. I only do things that I can remember 100% in my head at all times. If I forget anything, it wasn't worth remembering.

What projects are you into?

[SiliconWizard]

Short answer: No.

More elaborate answer: you shouldn't trust any particular media for "long-term" storage anyway. Each have their own particular way of failing. So unless you absolutely have to guarantee long-term retention (such as if you were sending data in deep space hoping for some civilization to find it someday), your best bet is always to replicate data on a regular basis.

Sure the time period is ideally not too short, else it becomes unpractical. Once a year or once every other year, for data that doesn't change, is reasonable. 5 may be pushing your luck a bit too far, and 10 certainly.

Just my 2 cents.

[iMo]

The best storage disk so far..

[Halcyon]

Data retention on SSDs vary, but there is a limit. It all depends on the type of memory used, quality, storage temperature etc...

Figures will vary but you should expect data to remain intact for about 10 years on an good quality SLC (very expensive) or MLC-based SSD at normal room temperature (25°C). With TLC, you may only get 1 year or two depending on how full the drive is. (These are in a powered-off state by the way.)

As temperatures increase, data retention decreases. For example, some tests show data retention at 55°C on a drive nearing capacity to be only a few months.

There is a JEDEC specification for endurance of SSD drives as well.

This might not be too important for home users, but in data centres where server rooms can operate at elevated temperatures, it can be a real problem. IBM released this note a few years ago: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/potential-ssd-data-loss-after-extended-shutdown

I haven't done any reading into V-NAND/3D NAND however some sources claim that it's approaching the level of endurance compared to the older MLC flash.

My advice is, keep data in motion. Create multiple copies and use a resilient file system, like ZFS to detect and correct data errors through semi-regular scrubs.

[Trader]

SSD offline can lose information, TLC (the most common today) is safe for up to 6 months, after that there is a high probability of missing bits.

[Berni]

Nope, do NOT use SSDs as backup drives.

The modern flash is more and more packed (both in cell size and number of analog levels per cell) so the data retention reliability keeps getting worse and worse. They mainly rely on ECC codes to repair corrupt data while it is being read back out. So the data has to be accessed every few years to make sure any corruption gets found and patched up. If a page of flash accumulates too many corrupt bits(as as the charge leaks out of the flash cells), then the ECC might not be able to repair the damage anymore.

The industrial solution to the problem is tape drives. They essentially last forever if stored in the right environment and the media/drive are separate. So if a tape drive fails the same tape can still be read back out on a brand new tape drive. This is more of an enterprise solution so it is not that cheap, but you might be able to find some units that ware thrown out of a server room up on ebay.

But the common home solution is to just buy a 2 external USB hard drives. They are cheep at high capacities and hard drives are generally very reliable long term. The reason why you want 2 is to guard against a hard drive failure. You can simply alternate between using the two drives when doing a backup. That way one drive is holding the latest backup, the other one is holding the previous backup. That way it is no more extra effort as you still copy onto just one drive, but you have a safety net if a drive dies or the backup process writes something bad to a drive.

[magic]

Another fun fact about SSDs is that a few bit flips in the right place can render the whole drive completely unreadable. Happened to me. After secure erase, the drive keeps working as if nothing happened, but old data are gone forever.

With spinning rust, media errors are localized and mechanical failures I have encountered so far tended to give some warning (smaller glitches) before no data could be recovered at all.

[wraper]

The first SSDs that show up on the market (2013-2014) were absolutely a horror movie!
Today things are different, they are reliable and all is good.

They were already available 5 years earlier. I personally bought 240GB OCZ Vertex 2 in about 2012 IIRC.

[DiTBho]

I dream about a msata solid disc made with FeRAM 

[Psi]

Trust the number of backups you have, not the medium they are backed up on.

SSDs are fine

[golden_labels]

I do not have own data on SSD for backup solutions. Based on talks with other people: modern SSDs do not have any absurdly high failure rate.

Having to choose between HDD and SSD, I would choose HDD for reasons unrelated to reliability. I can buy multiple HDDs for a price of equally sized SSD. Numbers always trump reliability of a single component.

[DiTBho]

Another fun fact about SSDs is that a few bit flips in the right place can render the whole drive completely unreadable. Happened to me. After secure erase, the drive keeps working as if nothing happened, but old data are gone forever

Some bits flipping in the right place which can really make the whole disk completely unreadable or insanely corrupted; the same happened to me, after the Windows XP crash, to a laptop that I had left in my desk drawer for 4 months.

I mean, a simple crash can't destroy NTFS like this, and I'm not sure, but the accident might be the consequence, not the cause, because some months later, the same problem happened with xfs-v3 running Linux.

Again, as you said, after the secure erase, the drive continued to work as if nothing happened, but this time I decided to replace the SSD with a new one because I trust it anymore.

No precious data lost, thanks to back-ups 

[wraper]

SSDs usually crap out because of firmware locks it, often because of some firmware bugs as it shuffles the data all around a lot. It's much more complicated than HDD which simply write the data to designated area. Old SSD tended to lock out completely as some error happened, modern SSD usually lock into read-only mode which allows you to copy the data slowly.  I would not recommend using SSD for a long term backup where SSD remains non powered for many months. Modern NAND loses charge pretty fast and the more bit per cell is stored, the harder it's to distinguish the actual level initially written.

[50ShadesOfDirt]

Didn't see it yet, but as long as your valuable data is protected under something like the "3-2-1" rule for backups, then you should be as "golden" as that voyager disk.

Then you can fiddle with individual elements of the rule, like SSD in place of something else, for some piece of the 3-2-1 rule.

[Nusa]

Punch cards survive the longevity rule. Still having the equipment to create or read them is another matter.

[dobsonr741]

SSD improved a lot and prices went down in the last 10 years. Check the TBW (total bytes written) as the indicator of the endurance. The good news when SSD fails it goes read only, not like a spinning disk completely dead.

If you think about data retention for 10 years you must be thinking on backup alternatives, regardless of media.

I’m personally doing SSD for fast access at home, and cloud backup for long term.

[Perkele]

Define "backup". Large monolithic files, or a huge number of smaller ones?
How often is a backup disk powered-on? How often do you check it for errors?
The same applies to "spinning rust" disks, USB memory sticks and any other R/W media.

Which filesystem?

And yeah, without some variant of "3-2-1" you're going to lose the data.

[DiTBho]

DVD-ram is a good backup solution for me, 4GB on each cartridge.
But I want a Plasmon unit 

[vk6zgo]

Quite a few years ago, I decided to "digitise" all my 35mm transparencies, so bought an appropriate scanner.

I did a bunch of them, & it was "so far, so good", except that the scanner didn't have the dynamic range to reproduce detail of relatively dimly lit subjects, but they were quite few, so I was happy enough.

At that point, the (XP) computer crashed, & lost all of my photos.
After trying all the "clever tricks" to no avail, I put it into the "too hard basket".
 
I got about 6 months of storage, out of that "spinning rust" drive!
Meanwhile, the original transparencies are still "hanging in there", from 50-60 years ago!

The slide scanner disappeared into the household "black hole", & only recently emerged, minus its software disk, so I guess I will have to buy something else to do the job, plus, maybe, a standalone backup drive.

The easy way is to say, "To hell with it---when I'm gone, nobody will care, anyway!"

[Berni]

Yep data preservation is a ongoing journey rather than a destination.

Even when using long lasting storage media there is a likelihood that the drive for reading it breaks. When that happens it is so many years down the road that the media type is obsolete so you can't even buy new drives anymore, so you have to go down the route of finding an old one on ebay in working enough condition to rescue the data.

My own strategy for data preservation is a NAS server. It uses parity drives to guard against drive failiures, then the whole thing gets copied over to some USB hard drives every one or two years. That way even the worst of failures will leave at least most of the data recoverable.

[Halcyon]

I know a lot of people complain about cloud storage, but something like Google Workspace is actually quite a viable alternative (with none of the privacy hangups of the free versions of Google).

For AUD$8.40 per month, you get 30 GB or for $16.80 you get 2 TB. You simply upload/sync and they take care of the longevity of your data. Plus you get all the other advantages and features of Google Workspace.

If you're looking somewhere to store your family photo collection or similar, this might be a better solution for some people.

[magic]

$16.8 per month is $200 per year, for that price you can easily buy a 2TB spinner or two

[jonpaul]

cloud...insecure, hacks, providers mine for data and report to govt and spy agencies eg do you store illegal or pornographie photos.

SSD for years we are using  500gb..1 TB  Samsung EVO 850,860, 870 etc  t layer, never had an issue

jon

[Berni]

cloud...insecure, hacks, providers mine for data and report to govt and spy agencies eg do you store illegal or pornographie photos.

SSD for years we are using  500gb..1 TB  Samsung EVO 850,860, 870 etc  t layer, never had an issue

jon

Yep they hate not having access to files that are not stored in the cloud. Not to worry Apple has found an innovative solution to the problem:
https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-now/


I don't tend to worry about that too much. It takes too much effort to keep my data out of the hands of big corporations. More that tech companies shut down services from time to time, so i don't want to rely on one.

Also the monthly cost of only a few dollars a month adds up to quite a sum over the 10 years or so one might expect a DIY external hard drive backup system might be in operation, especially since the DIY solution would give a few TB rather than a few GB of space.

[magic]

 

I never opted in to Apple network services of any kind - I use macOS software on Apple hardware.

Imagine being that gullible.
Might as well go and trust Microsoft or Google if you are at that

[Halcyon]

cloud...insecure, hacks, providers mine for data and report to govt and spy agencies eg do you store illegal or pornographie photos.

SSD for years we are using  500gb..1 TB  Samsung EVO 850,860, 870 etc  t layer, never had an issue

jon

On the contrary, cloud storage can be extremely secure, it can sometimes depend on the service and how you handle your data. I actually did some assessments on various providers for Government data up to Top Secret level. The results were interesting. Needless to say, Apple didn't make the cut.

Also, don't store illegal photos of children. I think that goes without saying?

[magic]

I have some photos of myself which were legal when they were taken but would likely cause problems today.
It's laughable.

Everybody who subjects himself to such automated searches is simply a moron looking for trouble.
Whether you use corporate American "cloud" or install corporate American spyware on your own machines.

[David Hess]

What are your experiences with consumer grade SSD for long term (over 5 years) backup?

I also use the Crucial BX500 and now MX500 series for offline backup, but have only been doing so for a little more than a year.  I use Window's robocopy to update the backup SSD from the working one, and then calculate the hash values for every file on the source, and then run the hash check on the backup.

Besides using the hash check to verify that the backup files are correct, generating the hashes on the source and backup drives also forces a read of every sector of every file, which will in theory force the drives to do a scrub on read if any data needs to be refreshed.  The implication here is that if an SSD is used for long term backup, it should periodically be powered up and the entire contents read to force scrubbing.

[M0HZH]

I've had SSDs fail and corrupt data twice.

I still run everything on SSDs, but I backup to HDD (local NAS) and have secondary backups to cloud (Amazon Glacier). For critical data, there is a 3rd backup (USB HDD).

[Rick Law]

First, thanks for all the input everyone!  I appreciate it.

My backups are personal backups.  Nothing work related (retired).  Stuff like tax records and old personal data I like to keep.  While typically recommendation for tax records for 7 years, my understanding is that the "statue of limitation" doesn't apply with at least US federal tax and perhaps States as well, so I am targeting at least 10 years.

My current approach is mirror on magnetic drives for video, photos, and other less important stuff.  For more important (tax and such) is to also do an annual DVD (8gb) backup as 2nd source.

I think I will stick with HDD for now since it is lower cost than SSD and is as durable as SSD (assuming it is not dropped or otherwise physically damaged.)

..
I wouldn't rely on broad classifications to make such decisions, I'd look at the historical failure rates of specific models.  For me SSDs are only Samsung and not the old 840 series.  HDDs are various HGST models, the Samsung (now Seagate) 2TB 2.5" M9T (for laptop internal backup) and for big non-critical stuff (media) the 8TB Samsung 3.5" drives shucked from external enclosures.  The last are low-power, low-RPM and SMR, but so far so good. YMMV and it might pay to read the reliability reports from BackBlaze.

As far as time and potential bitrot, I've been running a Samsung 830 for 10 years and that computer is now only used occasionally.  No issues or errors.

I am not sure "historic data for specific model" matters in today's competitive environment.  Even Samsung has been caught in "SSD Bait & Switch" .   That is the practice of a good initial product, and after a while (long enough for benchmarks and tests done by publications and users to be done), they switch over to inferior parts with much worst performance while still sell them under the same model/sku.  I have both Crucial and WD Blue, they both are "on the list" of bait & switch also.

This two are not the only videos I found on the topic, it just happens to be the first founds:

[Perkele]

cloud...insecure, hacks, providers mine for data and report to govt and spy agencies eg do you store illegal or pornographie photos.

SSD for years we are using  500gb..1 TB  Samsung EVO 850,860, 870 etc  t layer, never had an issue

jon

Resurrecting the thread. Have an 870 EVO ready to be RMA'd.
It seems there is some kind of bug in EVO family (>= 1TB models) firmware that kills the drives after about 6 months to one year.
Drives start developing non-correctable ECC errors.
Mine was built in second half of 2021.
Old drives, and the ones with recent firmware fix seem not to have this issue.
Samsung refuses to recognise that there is a series error, but they accept returns under the warranty.

[Rick Law]

What are your experiences with consumer grade SSD for long term (over 5 years) backup?

I also use the Crucial BX500 and now MX500 series for offline backup, but have only been doing so for a little more than a year.  I use Window's robocopy to update the backup SSD from the working one, and then calculate the hash values for every file on the source, and then run the hash check on the backup.

Besides using the hash check to verify that the backup files are correct, generating the hashes on the source and backup drives also forces a read of every sector of every file, which will in theory force the drives to do a scrub on read if any data needs to be refreshed.  The implication here is that if an SSD is used for long term backup, it should periodically be powered up and the entire contents read to force scrubbing.

What software util do you use for the hash calculation?  Would you recommend it?

Thanks

[David Hess]

What software util do you use for the hash calculation?  Would you recommend it?

Since I am doing it manually on Windows, I am using the more recent version of Hashcheck which is a shell extension and now supports multithreading:

https://github.com/gurnec/HashCheck

[SiliconWizard]

$16.8 per month is $200 per year, for that price you can easily buy a 2TB spinner or two

Yep, and it's not just about the cost. My own data has no business being on anything that I do not own and that other people can have access to, unless I explicitely share it.
You know by now that almost all data stored on cloud stuff WILL, at the very least, end up getting used one way or another to feed machine learning. Of course, at worst, it can be used against you, or can be leaked, or you can be blocked from accessing it at any point for any reason.

There will NEVER be a good reason for cloud shit for private data.

If I haven't done what it takes to ensure the security and retention of my own data, then so be it. I'll get what I deserve, I'm a responsible adult. Yeah I know, shocking!
In practive, I've never lost a single byte of data in over 20 years.

[wraper]

$16.8 per month is $200 per year, for that price you can easily buy a 2TB spinner or two

For that money you can get 10TB spinner, two crap 2TB SSD or one very good 2TB SSD. On other hand you also need to consider electricity costs if you run NAS, last year it was so expensive in EU that would add up quite significantly.

[dobsonr741]

Owning a hard drive does not equal to point and click restore, alternate site storage when your hose burns down or burglarized. If you really need your data back regardless of what the best bet is a service, in this day and age.

For privacy concerned ones, it’s up to you to apply encryption you trust. Same defense you should be doing on your local drives, it can be stollen or lost.

[magic]

Another fun fact about SSDs is that a few bit flips in the right place can render the whole drive completely unreadable. Happened to me. After secure erase, the drive keeps working as if nothing happened, but old data are gone forever.

With spinning rust, media errors are localized and mechanical failures I have encountered so far tended to give some warning (smaller glitches) before no data could be recovered at all.

Well, I'm forced to partly take this back. Recently one of my old spinners simply seized and refused to spin up at all. A few beeping and buzzing sounds from the motor and "nope, can't do it".

I opened it up to find the heads crashed onto the platters and seized. Fixed this, reassembled and 99.97% of the data are back so far, the rest may take days if at all.


Stats over my lifetime so far:
HDD: irreversibly lost a few megs in total
SSD: irreversibly lost half a terabyte total

[TomKatt]

cloud...insecure, hacks, providers mine for data and report to govt and spy agencies eg do you store illegal or pornographie photos.

I use cloud storage as my primary with local SSD / spinning drives for replication.  I trust them in that order.

You typically compress files before uploading anyway, so I feel using password protection with the 'Encrypt File Names' option makes the contents virtually useless to anyone who might gain access. 

And it goes without saying not to upload anything illegal.  That's just stupid (and illegal !)