470
Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The problem is that USB flash drives don't keep their data intact for very long when they're powered down. It lasts long enough for everyday use, but not even as long as a hard disk for archival.
There's no periodic cell refresh in flash memory like there is in DRAM. When USB sticks are plugged in, all you are doing is powering up the flash chip and interface ICs.
You'd have to read a block then write it back to actually refresh the stored charges in the cells.
Do SSDs do that automatically in the background, or is all the data I'm not actively refreshing gradually rotting away?
Oh, gotcha. Was thinking about the peripheral type support rather than its actual lifetime.