Question Still use a 850 Pro that has sat for a year?

[gipper53]

I'm going to build my son a new gaming desktop, and one of the parts I have is a 512GB 850 Pro that came out of a previous system. It has sat on a shelf for about 12 months. I'm familiar with the fact that SSDs lose data over time when not used, but assuming this drive will be fully formatted and used as a secondary storage drive, should I be worried about it failing? Nothing in his PC will be 'critical' data, but I'd rather not use it if the chance of it crapping out are high.

 

[corkyg]

Why not try it and see?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It has sat on a shelf for about 12 months. I'm familiar with the fact that SSDs lose data over time when not used, but assuming this drive will be fully formatted and used as a secondary storage drive, should I be worried about it failing?

Shouldn't be any issues. This applies only to unpowered SSDs. There might be issues if you left it unpowered in a drawer for 10 years, but a year shouldn't be any issue whatsoever. Among other tricks modern SSDs have very sophisticated ECC to deal with read errors. Sure, there was issues with early TLC Samsung 840's, but those should be ironed out.

NAND Flash is pretty robust overall, but it's only over the really long term (>10 years) they should start to actually loose data. Heat accelerates this process, so the cooler the better. But the sad fact is we don't -know- yet what the average life expectancy of 3D NAND is. 3D NAND is a fairly new technology after all.

Now, for real long term archiving, you should definitely be looking at old fashion HDDs. Or optical.

 

[UsandThem]

Should be perfectly fine.

Install it and run Samsung Magician to see its health.

 

[KentState]

SSD's don't go bad, its that when left unpowered for an extended period of time, the cells can leak their charge. The drop in voltage can mean an improper reading of the cell. I would not worry about using it if not for archive purposes.

 

[gipper53]

Thanks, everyone. Sounds like I'll be reusing the drive as planned.