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

[VirtualLarry]

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.

 

[Modelworks]

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 .

 

[Jeff7]

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?