

Ask HN: Do I need to worry about bit rot in 2015? - ptype

Hi HN,<p>Under what situations should I worry about bit rot in 2015 rather than just outright disk failure?<p>For my photo album? For my postgres database with important data?<p>Does SSD make a difference?
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ttctciyf
Not sure if you're already aware, but "bit rot" is an ambiguous term nowadays.

The original definition[1] refers jokingly to bits "rotting" as an (obviously
false if taken literally) explanation of why software that used to work fine
has stopped working after a period of time elapsed, actually because of causes
now more properly(?) known as "software rot"[2], but the term is sometimes
(mistakenly IMHO) used to refer to actual data degradation[3], or "data
rot"[3]

This whole sorry tale is actually due to the related but little-known
phenomenon of "sememe rot", a gradual decay in units of meaning so that
thoughts and sentences that used to be perfectly coherent will gradually
become incomprehensible, or even worse come to mean something different, even
quite opposite, to their original import.

Anyway, from your SSD question I guess you're interested in data degradation.
The best advice here is just the obvious: "always back up!" Though this
doesn't answer the interesting question as to whether data degradation is more
or less of a problem this year than last, it is still the best strategy.

[1] [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/bit-
rot.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/bit-rot.html)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation)

