The best option, then, seems to always stick to higher-spec drives made by well-known vendors, and keep them at room temperature with controlled humidity… and always keep backups handy.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-18/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Bruno Ferreira Contributor Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
Gururu If charge retention is the operative principal behind these drives, then every test will have caveats particularly when it comes to environmental variables. I am not sure that anything can hold a charge reliably without intervention indefinitely. Reply
nastastic "If anything can be gleaned from this conflicting set of limited results with small data sets …" NO, NO, NO, PLEASE STOP THERE! Nothing should be gleamed from this, nothing; any gleaming will be pure conjecture. This is incredibly reckless to make or suggest inferences that cannot be supported with the technical and statistical rigor necessary when discussing charge movements in floating gate memory elements. Please, I beg Tom's to do more to illustrate and educate readers on fundamental principals and not just re-write articles from random sources. Reply
Stomx nastastic said: "If anything can be gleaned from this conflicting set of limited results with small data sets …" NO, NO, NO, PLEASE STOP THERE! Nothing should be gleamed from this, nothing; any gleaming will be pure conjecture. This is incredibly reckless to make or suggest inferences that cannot be supported with the technical and statistical rigor necessary when discussing charge movements in floating gate memory elements. Please, I beg Tom's to do more to illustrate and educate readers on fundamental principals and not just re-write articles from random sources. Exactly. But that means to show positive as well as negative sides and such sites exist selling advertisement and afraid to mention even a slightest disadvantages Reply
dimar "SSD?? data retention test" shows promising results after six years — results show no data corruption on "USB sticks??" Maybe you could do this on several drives like Samsung T7, Corsair USB sticks, and a few other known SSDs and USB sticks 4x of each, then test for bitrot after 5/10/15/20 years. Reply
bit_user Last year, I found myself needing more removable USB sticks and decided to try and find quality drives, after 3 out of 4 "Sandisk Ultra" drives I'd recently purchased arrived DoA (two different packages: one was a 3-pack, another was a single drive). I searched around for the best, most premium models, but couldn't find anything still in production – at least, that wasn't way bigger than I needed. Eventually, the choice pretty much seemed to narrow down to Samsung BAR Plus. They're not cheap, but at least Samsung is a 1st party NAND maker. I wish I knew whether they're TLC, but I fear QLC. BTW, for refreshing drives, I recommend using the badblocks tool, on Linux. It has a -n option that reads the drive in chunks, tests the underlying flash, and then rewrites the original contents back in place. I'd also recommend using -b 4096 -c 512, which will test 2 MB at a time. If the drive supports it, run fstrim on it, first. Make sure the drive isn't mounted, when you do this , but I think it automatically checks that, for you. Reply
Dav_Daddy Funny, personally I've heard about this but never experienced it with a USB drive. SD cards? Sure pretty much constantly. I just came across a 2GB USB stick from a no name manufacturer that I used to have plugged into my car stereo with a bunch of music on it. I know the data has to be over 10 years old because I sold that car back in 2015. The drive itself was far from new back then maybe 2010 vintage? Probably older. I have no clue when it was last plugged in to power but I copied all the media off of it into my PC with no problem. This was about as cheap of a no name drive as you could buy at the time too. Actually in that same box I found a few really old drives too. I'm talking 128mb models from around 2000. I didn't try any of them out just because I didn't think there would be anything useful on them if they worked at all? I think I'll go see if they are still alive at all though I doubt it. If they are I'll report back. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/usb-flash-drives/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/usb-flash-drives/unpowered-flash-drive-data-retention-test-shows-promising-results-after-six-years-results-show-no-data-corruption-on-usb-sticks-challenging-conventional-wisdom#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
- March Into the Cloud With 15 New Games Coming to GeForce NOW
- [Daily Due Diligence] NVDA NVDA
- Oracle and OpenAI's Abilene expansion saga detailed: 600MW expansion gets scrapped, as larger 4.5GW agreement remains on track
- China warns of fresh chip shortage as Nexperia dispute escalates again – Dutch headquarters allegedly locked Chinese staff out of IT systems
- India’s Global Systems Integrators Build Next Wave of Enterprise Agents With NVIDIA AI, Transforming Back Office and Customer Support
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.