@gloriouscow It's still, what? Like plug it in every ten years or so for a few minutes?

I see a lot of fear mongering, but flash RAM doesn't degrade as quickly or as easily as people seem to think. It's not infinite by any means, but it really does take a lot longer to degrade than the claims going around much of the Internet.

Nothing is infinite. Magnetic drives lose magnetism over time and capacitors and such in each can degrade. Optical discs make claims of 100 years for good ones, 300 for super archive discs, but they need to be burned at a low speed in a high quality burner and stored very well. In 100+ years will they be able to read an optical disc though? (I mean, presumably whatever tech people have could adapt to it, but will people have it in their homes? Probably not.)

@nazokiyoubinbou

if you are put together enough and organized enough to have some sort of yearly flash-device-powering holiday (that implies you can even find what boxes they are all in) then I salute you on being someone who's brain I would basically find incomprehensible

@gloriouscow I didn't say yearly. It takes a whole heck of a lot longer than a year... That's my point. I forget how often you need to do it, but it's crazy high. Like five years to be super safe, probably 10+ to be realistic.

A couple of months ago I dug a MP3 player out that I last used in something like 2012, just before I switched to a smartphone instead. The old full sized SD flash card in it still was 100% readable with zero errors as was the internal flash (including its firmware of course.)

(As a side note, fun fact, but somehow the battery wasn't wrecked despite being below a safe voltage for who knows how many years... It's probably like 60% of what it once was, but it still holds a decent charge. Not bad for a player I bought in something like 2008...)

@nazokiyoubinbou

for some reason i find your singular anecdote completely convincing and retract all my arguments

@gloriouscow Then look up the whitesheets and etc if you like... I don't see what the rudeness has achieved.

All I'm saying is that it does last longer than just a few years as people seem to have gotten the idea and fearmongering that flash media is doomed to die horribly and quickly won't help anyone. As the OP says, a flash backup is better than no backup.

@nazokiyoubinbou

nobody is fearmongering, i'm making a point about decades, you're talking years. we're talking past each other, i'm just noticing it and choosing not to continue

@nazokiyoubinbou

so your solution is that everyone on earth keep track of every single flash device and power it on once a decade and this somehow makes my original statement worth objecting to

@gloriouscow You're seriously throwing a lot of hyperbole in there. My solution is "that drive with some important backups in the fire safe should be plugged in for a few minutes once in a while." That is not complicated.

My objection is to the claim that flash drives are useless for storage beyond a few years. I won't claim they'll last 100+ years. I will claim they'll last long enough to do really basic backup tasks. Enough so that someone shouldn't just give up on having backups because the Internet as a whole has been passing around claims that flash drives die really fast in storage but they don't have any M-discs handy.