The answer is that nobody knows because SSD’s are too new to tell.

We played this game with optical media when it came out in the 80’s and 90’s, many claims were made about the longevity of various discs based on lab testing of accelerated aging, and now we know that simulating accelerated aging doesn’t really cause the media to deteriorate in the way actual aging does.

There are all kinds of things that could go wrong with SSD’s sitting there unpowered. As was mentioned, the cells lose charge over time and you get essentially bit-rot as they decay. If some part of the drive’s firmware relies on a particular portion of data to exist on the flash memory and that has rotted away, well then that drive’s now dead. Does this actually happen in practice? It’d be bad design, but we consumers have no way of knowing.

Likewise there are other things that can happen. Capacitors can degrade, tin whiskers can grow. All these things happen with solid-state electronics and cause them to fail over time.

This is not a question about how long data I put on the SSD’s will last.

Counterargument, you actually ARE. For example, the firmware is also stored on flash (albeit it’s NOR instead of NAND as far as I know).

I have absolutely no clue how long NOR flash lasts, although I have heard anecdotally that it is much more reliable (and more expensive) than NAND. Hence why SSDs use NAND for mass storage, and use NOR for shit like firmware.

Is there any reason they won’t work after that amount of time?

Without that firmware it’s not gonna do a whole lot lol. So I don’t have an answer to your question, but I feel like it should also be considered.

30 years at best. 12 years typically. It’s hard to say how modern tech will last until we have more of it for longer

For your purposes, I would archive data onto Optical Media. Like archive disks (M-discs), or maybe you can get away with Blu-ray disks for a bit lower cost. That’s currently the only medium that will survive pretty much anything other than melting (solar radiation can’t ruin etched data)

You can have some SSD’s, but you may lose the data on them overtime, they do “bit rot” after a few years. So you may just want to keep them as a “restore medium” wherein you take the data off your optical disks and load it up onto the SSD’s for a good (fast) experience.

Or maybe do a combination of the two, that way if the data makes it on the SSD’s, then great! But you have some sort of more stable medium to fall back on.

Downside of course, is optical disks are starting to feel pretty small now :(

Ignoring the data integrity.

I personally think SSDs would last longer then a HDD and their are no moving parts.

Tapes last 15-30 years according to the manufacturer but similar to SSDs will degrade as you use them.

I think it will come down to the environment they are in.

The chemicals in the plastic packaging on the electronics chips (including transistors) slowly leaches into the silicon and will eventually mess up the semiconductor characteristics, causing them to fail…

I’m not sure why people are not mentioning the fact that there are a limited finite number of writes on every SSD unlike HDDs. It’s like astronomically huge and I’ve never actually personally heard of anyone hitting that number before, but it is a thing that exists. And if we’re talking 50 years and it’s actually being used for that entire span and writes are happening, then I’m doubtful it would be the components that would go first. But as far as shelf life referring to just sitting there stored away and then plugged back in to a computer in 50 years, yeah that’s probably going to be more on the components and the environment it was stored in I would guess.

Maybe you should be asking if the SATA technology will be around 10+ years from now. Lots of machines are leaning on NVMe over SSD. As with anything on a server, PC, or Laptop tech changes all the time. Like you wouldn’t be able to use a PC case from the early 2000s today as the connectors aren’t the same as they are on a modern PC.

You may want to look at saving just more than the SSDs on the shelf, you want to ensure that you have a Motherboard that can support those drives.

seems like it would be better to just continually have extra drives on hand and replenish it every X years then try a ‘one and done’ approach and hope they will work in 50 years. Especially considering any SSD you buy today will be underwhelming in terms of performance and capacity in 20 years (yet alone 50).

Is there any reason they won’t work after that amount of time?

Your first problem isn’t how long these drives will work but how to check if they still work 50 years from now. Do you think computers in 2073 will still have the connectors being used today (e.g. M.2, SATA, SAS, U.2, U.3, EDSFF, etc)?

Take PATA HDDs for example. That storage interface began disappearing from motherboards in 2007. HDDs using that interface stopped production about 10 years ago. As years go by, even adaptors for that interface will become rarer. If you asked this question 20 years ago but instead of SSDs you stored new PATA HDDs, do you think you’ll be able to check if they’re still working 30 years from now?

To workaround the connector problem, you’ll also have to store equipment that will work with the interface for those SSDs. Maybe a motherboard, an adaptor, even a power supply. How long would those extra hardware you have to store will last?