• SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Like once every few years at least. More often if they are cheap or if the cells have been rewritten a lot.

      • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Flash memory is not considered a good long term storage medium for archival purposes. The data slowly dissipates, a new card can hold the data around 5 to 10 years, theoretically. A cheap card even less. But the cells will wear down with every write so the charge in the cells will dissipate quicker if they have experienced lots of write cycles. So yeah I would power flash memory at least once a year to be safe.