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SanDisk "Preserve" - USB flash drive with claimed 100 year data-retention

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VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
http://www.sandisk.com/misc/preserve

If you notice, it is not "guaranteed" 100-year lifespan, only that it is "up to" 100 years lifespan.

I'm wondering how much of this is marketing mumbo-jumbo, and how much of this is real technology?

After all, the Patriot Torx SSDs were warrantied for 10 years, but only offered 5 years data-retention.

As far as I am aware, for flash memory stored at room temps, that is in fact the estimated lifespan for data-retention. Better/more ECC will help with that, but it's still a significant lifespan limitation.

I'm wondering if SanDisk really figured out a way around that, or what.

I would be curious to find out what nm the process used to fab their NAND is, as I'm certain that would affect the estimated lifespan as well.
 
Anything that uses relative terms in the specs is suspicious. Things like low power or improved performance can mean anything, the same with 'up to 100 years', if 1 drive out of millions meets the 100 year retention target then they have proved their claims.

Phase change memory can do 100 years but NAND will always have a problem with the cells slowly losing bits , it is one of the reasons they still make PROM memory for things where the data is critical .
 
Side-thought: Is there any kind of "refresh" utility available that will re-write all the data on an Flash drive? Or will a simple CHKDSK /r do that?
 
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