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Using sd cards as permanent storage?

Hugo Drax

Hugo Drax

Diamond Member
Anyone do this? Once I fill the card I lock it and store it in a fireproof safe. I have a bunch already over the years.

How safe are the for archival purposes? I also keep a copy on my ds 415+ which I also back up with an external drive that is stored offsite.

These are raw images from my dslr cameras
 
Not very safe because they are unprotected NAND; no RAID5 bitcorrection like modern SSDs have and no power-loss protection so they corrupt easily when used. The latter cannot happen when it is lying on the shelf though.

NAND itself has 10 - 100 years of average retention when not used, but can drop quickly to below 12 months when their MWI has been reached. Especially random writes to unmanaged NAND can wear it quickly, degrading the retention level to unacceptable levels.

So if you use brand new SD cards and write stuff only once, they should have decent shelf life. But i would not trust my important stuff to it. But with enough backups, it is feasible.
 
Why would you do this? It seems like a very expensive storage type.

Optical disks are still the best. It's amazing how much damage they can endure before being ruined. Here's a video of a guy drilling a hole into a CD to see how much damage can be inflicted before it stops working.
numberphile: 11
 
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