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Flash storage has many obvious advantages:

  • zero random access latency
  • portability and robustness
  • highest speed possible
  • most diverse form factors and sizes possible (ranging from MicroSD to RAID SSD)

But flash storage's weakness is data retention, and flash storage with higher density (e.g. multi-layer cell technology, 128 GB on a MicroSD card, thus physically very small sectors) because of the way flash storage works: storing electrical charges using transistors.

These extremely small transistors in flash storage lose their electrical charge over time, which is recoverable to some degree thanks to error correction code of each sector that the storage controller of the flash storage handles on the next read of the sector by refreshing the electrical charge. Some flash storage (and I guess pretty much all SSD's, but rarely SD cards) also do that automatically when idle (plugged in but not in use).

But I already have occasionally lost data years ago because I relied a little too much on flash storage and created backups too little aggressively.

Also, flash storage is the most vulnerable in case of power surges and faulty adapters (e.g. SD-to-USB adapters, USB hubs), where failed write accesses could lead to file system header corruption.

Flash storage has the best portability, is a very practical way of file transportation and maybe for redundant backups, but should better not be solely relied upon.

Also read:

Flash storage has many obvious advantages: * zero random access latency * portability and robustness * highest speed possible * most diverse form factors and sizes possible (ranging from MicroSD to RAID SSD) But flash storage's weakness is data retention, and flash storage with higher density (e.g. *multi-layer cell* technology, 128 GB on a MicroSD card, thus physically very small sectors) because of the way flash storage works: storing electrical charges using transistors. These extremely small transistors in flash storage lose their electrical charge over time, which is recoverable to some degree thanks to error correction code of each sector that the storage controller of the flash storage handles on the next read of the sector by refreshing the electrical charge. Some flash storage (and I guess pretty much all SSD's, but rarely SD cards) also do that automatically when idle (plugged in but not in use). But I already have occasionally lost data years ago because I relied a little too much on flash storage and created backups too little aggressively. Also, flash storage is the most vulnerable in case of power surges and faulty adapters (e.g. SD-to-USB adapters, USB hubs), where failed write accesses could lead to file system header corruption. ---- Flash storage has the best portability, is a very practical way of file transportation and maybe for **redundant** backups, but should better not be **solely** relied upon. Also read: [Optical media is heavily underrated — little known advantages.](https://poal.co/s/TellPoal/148944)

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Thank you for the quality comment.