SSD unpowered Data Retention

[Wise Old Owl]

I thought I would post some recent findings as there has been a ton of contradicting information about the ability of an SSD as long-term data storage.
Now for context, I started using SSDs back during the HDD drought about 15 years ago? due to flooding in Taiwan closing all the HDD production, with my first being an Intel 320 series 120GB (which is still going by the way)
Anyway, with a ton of older, small capacity drives lying around, I started looking to use them for storage of large files like .RAF which can go over 250GB each.
During this I just found an SSD from an old PC build I did for my DAD years ago to act as its C: drive.
This drive is an OCZ Agility3 120GB one, and it was pulled from that PC and put into storage on the 19th of Jan 2016 and never touched since. Also, this drive had been in use for several years before it was pulled.
Today (7th April 2024) I just plugged it in and all data is present and correct almost 9 years later.

 

[Wise Old Owl]

your test shows unpowered for 8 years. indeed data retention is not an issue at this age however you should have benchmarked the drive.
i think i did a thread on here with my findings on a samsung sd card that sat in my camera for over a year and not used. the photos were all intact but the read and write speed of the card had tanked hard.
after a full format the card had its speed back.

I had it connected via a USB 3 adapter, and I was able to hop around random files and open them in their apps without noticing any performance difference. A lot of over analysing on here, I merely posted the information as this is a real hard drive, with real use that has had a real near 9 years sat in a cupboard. This is also a pretty naff drive and small capacity. Most threads online about this involve simulated data. Whilst I am not telling anyone how to go about storing their data, I'm sure there are those that will find it of comfort that such a drive can indeed still hold its data after nearly a decade without power. It's a very different thing to say it should do this or that vs it actually happening.
As for benchmarking it, why? I would never entertain using it again as a functioning drive, rather I will continue to use it for long term storage.