The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/IntergalacticBurn on 2025-05-02 18:44:59.
Long story short, I'm currently on vacation in a third-world country and 1) the Internet sucks here like it's a 56K connection, 2) data plans are insanely expensive, and 3) SSDs are also insanely expensive.
Due to the nature of my work, I need a ton of continually-expanding storage on-the-go, so I've been forced (with great reluctance, believe me) to rely on buying a ton of large capacity microSD cards to use as storage.
At the moment, I probably have around a total of 2 TB worth of storage, split across many 256 and 512 GB microSD cards. This is projected to increase to more than 2-3x that amount.
I've done a lot of research, but information has been scant with regards to SD cards. There's plenty of articles about SSDs and other forms of storage, but SD cards seem to be unfortunately unpopular as a storage solution.
According to one source, a proper refresh would involve moving all of the files on a card elsewhere, formatting the card, and then moving the files back on. But no specific frequency has been detailed. Whether it's once a year, or every six months, or three, or one, etc. That bit is unknown.
Considering that this is my only solution at this time and cloud storage is impossible when I'm stuck with some medieval 56k Internet, how often should I refresh my microSD cards to make sure they don't lose data to bit rot?
All of the cards are major name brands that have been tested to not be fake. I basically only write data to the cards once and then they get shelved once they're filled. Sometimes some files get shuffled around but rarely, and not in significant amounts. The cards are marketed for thousands of cycles.
Thanks a bunch ahead of time for the help, everyone. In the meanwhile, I'll try to look around these boondocks for a portable large capacity HDD to store redundant backups.