SSD data retention for archived drives

[idata]

Hi,

I work in litigation support for a large corporation and have been trying to warn them that the data retention time for an SSD is shorter than the 10 years of so for standard physical drives. They archive users' physical hard drives and count on the data on them being available almost indefinitely. Does Intel or anyone have a white paper or info I can use to report to our IT people here about data longevity issues with SSDs that are sitting in storage and not installed in a PC?

[idata]

NandFlashGuy, one quick follow-up question. You stated that temperature will affect data retention in NAND chips. I've looked at as much IEEE material as I could find and the only thing I could find regarding NAND and temperature is that working NAND chips are negatively affected by higher temperatures. What I couldn't find was reference to temperature impact on NAND data retention in idle chips. Do you have any further info or reference you could point me to? Are we talking temperature extremes or those within human tolerance (0-105 degrees F)? In other words, would hard drives stored at 35 degrees F show measurable data retention differences to those stored at 90 degrees F? Thanks for any additional info you can provide.

[idata]

Hi bdwilcox,

Yes, there may be a measureable difference between 90C and 30C at a high enough cycle count.

In fact, JEDEC specifies the method of modeling long term data retention at room temperature via shorter term data retention at higher temperture. The relationship is related to the activation energy and is modeled by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation Arrhenious equation.

Here's a link to a Freescale datasheet (they used to partner with a NOR flash vendor) that I found via a quick search:

http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/eng_bulletin/EB618.pdf http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/eng_bulletin/EB618.pdf

In the Freescale example:

• 1008 hours at 150C is equivalent to 1150 years at 25C

Of course the specifics will vary depending on the Flash, but this at least gives you some decent first-order estimations.

[idata]

NandFlashGuy, thank you again for the first rate info and sorry to bother you again with that extra question. BTW, the difference in that Freescale example is simply staggering. This is definitely something I will need to look into regarding our current storage environment. Much thanks. -bdwilcox