Solid-state drives have become the default choice for everyday storage. They’re fast, efficient, silent, and far more convenient than mechanical hard drives. But if you’re also relying on SSDs for long-term, unpowered archival storage, there’s a catch: data stored on an SSD slowly degrades when the drive isn’t plugged in. Leave an SSD in a drawer for a few years, and you may discover corrupted files or a drive that’s completely unreadable.

This is why many professionals still avoid SSDs for long-term archiving and choose hard drives, magnetic tape, or M-Disc instead.

Your SSD’s data isn’t as permanent as it seems

Hard drives store data magnetically, which makes them relatively resilient to time spent unpowered. SSDs, however, store data by holding electrical charges inside NAND flash cells. These charges fade over time, and the rate depends heavily on the type of NAND used:

QLC NAND (budget SSDs): ~1 year unpowered
TLC NAND (most consumer SSDs): up to ~3 years
MLC NAND: up to ~5 years
SLC NAND: up to ~10 years

Since almost all modern consumer SSDs use TLC or QLC, many people risk data loss if their drives sit unused for over a year or two. Even though QLC has improved recently, 2–3 years unpowered is still the safe upper limit.

Once those stored voltages begin to leak, you can end up with partial corruption or a drive that can’t recover its data at all.

This makes SSDs a poor choice for long-term cold storage, especially for creators, researchers, and anyone who relies on archived data. HDDs have their own issues, such as bit rot, but they remain far more resistant to long periods without power.

If you haven’t checked your old SSD archives lately, now is the time.

But most people don’t need to panic

Archival storage is not a common use case

For typical users, this problem rarely matters. Most people have one or two SSDs inside their PC, and the drives are never left unpowered for more than a few weeks or months. When SSDs fail in everyday use, it’s usually due to:

a manufacturing defect
a power surge
firmware issues

—not because the drive sat unplugged.

Temperature and NAND quality can speed up voltage loss, but for everyday use, SSDs are extremely reliable.

It’s also worth remembering that SSDs have limited write cycles. Still, most users will replace their drives with newer, faster ones long before hitting those limits.

The real danger lies only in unpowered SSDs sitting around for years.

You should always have a backup

Regardless of what type of drive you use, a backup system is essential.

The simplest, most reliable method is the 3-2-1 backup rule:

3 copies of your data
2 different types of storage
1 copy stored off-site

For many people, that’s as easy as combining:

your main computer
a NAS or external HDD
a cloud storage provider

SSDs, HDDs, tapes—none of these are perfect. Every drive will fail eventually. A proper backup strategy ensures that even in the worst-case scenario, your data remains safe.

“Store it and forget it” doesn’t work with SSDs

SSDs are excellent as primary storage in your PC, and most users will never hit their lifetime limits. But as long-term, unpowered archival devices, they’re unreliable.

Data loss can begin in as little as 1 year for QLC drives and around 2–3 years for typical TLC drives.

If you need to store data for years without touching it, rely on alternate media and—more importantly—invest in a solid backup system. Relying on a single SSD in a drawer is simply asking for trouble.

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