Asolid state drive (SSD) (also known as a solid-state disk though it contains no actual disk nor a drive motor to spin a disk) is a data storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. We all know SSD’s qualities over regular hard drives and we normally think that it will last forever even if we smash it with hammer or pour acid on it.
The basic reason behind this flaw is the non-regulated and unmaintained temperature. The real problem is the time after which it will lose data. For different scenarios the time taken is also different – it can take months, or sometimes few days and then it’s gone.
Nobody needs the details on how important your stored data can be sometimes. Think as it is a legal evidence and it will go after two years in court as in India (blame the slow India judicial system) and suddenly you noticed that all data is gone or think of an instance suddenly all of your Facebook images are gone simply because Facebook stored it in SSD and forgot about it. But, it will not happen as Facebook have their separate cold storage facilities to outrun this problem.
A recent presentation is given by Alvin cox, Seagate’s engineer at Joint Electron Device Engineering Council seminar. He warned that the period of time data is retained on some solid-state drives is halved for every 9°F (or 5°C) rise in temperature where it’s stored. It means that if the solid state drive is at normal room temperature which is 25°C then it’s okay but if the temperature goes somewhat 5°C high, then half of your data will be gone.
Now all the guys living in desert areas might be thinking that why they still have their data safe. You don’t lose your data that easily if you are regularly giving power to it or maintaining the temperature by using it. Or, you are using some high-end SSD, which we all are using in our MacBooks or gaming laptops then it will have around two-year life span. So, for two years, your data will be safe even if you change the temperature or not.
But enterprise solid state drives are the most affected ones. These drives are having the data loss problem pretty severely. So for the companies who value their data or work on their stored data, it’s a big problem. The one and only reasonable solution to this is to make its copy on mechanical disk. Or else you might lose your data without knowing about it.
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