On Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 5:03 PM Ali via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> > I thought Flash could only hold the data in them X amount of years > > until > > the junctions discharge or whatever? It's less permanent than decent > > quality optical or pro magnetic media? > > > > You have to plug them in every so often to refresh I believe. > > Does REFRESHING mean reread and rewrite or just keep power to it? If it's > the latter it should be trivial to setup a system with backup battery just > to supply voltage to a bunch of SSD drives. > It depends on the drive's firmware. Some do background scans of blocks while idle. Others do not. Since you have no way of knowing which is which (or even when the backgroundscan is done), the safest way to force a scan is to read the whole drive... any blocks whose raw error count is too high will be rewritten to fresh blocks. If it's a good SSD you'll likely not notice this happening. If it's a crappy thumb drive... you may be better off copying to some other media.. Warner -Ali > >
