Joke Conspiracies

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Kokomheart@lemmy.ca

Cheap SSDs with generous warranties are designed to "fail" so they can harvest your data when you RMA them (startrek.website)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by IcedRaktajino@startrek.website to c/jokeconspiracy@lemmy.ca

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Note: I do not in any way believe this. It's just a "what if" crackpot thought I had when I woke up this morning to a dead, unrecognizable SSD in my "beater" laptop and filled out the warranty claim.

Cheap SSDs that have generous 3-5 year warranties (3 years in my case) are designed to "fail" sometime within that period so that you'll send them in for RMA. They don't fail due to any component failure, just a pseudo-randomly timed soft brick that can only be reactivated by the manufacturer. When you RMA it, they reset the killswitch and harvest your data. The replacement you get is just one that someone else has RMA'd that they have un-bricked.

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[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

There is a white paper on SSD and heat popping the electrons out of there trapped memory spots. I will have to search it. But an unpowered SSD in 40C will start showing signs of data loss in a week, hotter temps and your a could be gone in a month.

HDD, yes run it always instead of stop start

I've done a quick search but have not located the science article yet, I will check later. However the ssd standards have this. The device should meet that, but as you can see if you had a hot closet in India your data could be gone in 3 weeks.

Per JESD218, a client class SSD must maintain its data integrity at the defined BER for only 500 hours at 52°C (less than 21 days) or 96 hours at 66°C (only four days).

[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago

Now that makes me wonder how long SSDs' data would last in freezing temps.