this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Sorry dude, but bit rot is a very real thing on HDDs. They're magnetic media, which degrades over time. If you leave a disk cold for 2-5 years, there's a very good chance you'll get some bad sectors. SSDs aren't immune from bit rot, but that's not through quantum tunneling - not any more than your CPU is affected by it at least.
I did not meant to come across as saying that HDDs don't suffer bit rot. However, there are specific long term storage HDDs that are built specifically to be powered up sporadically and resist external magnetic influences on the track. In a proper storage environment they will last over 5 years without being powered up and still retain all information. I know it because i use them in this exact scenario for over 2 decades. Conversely there are no such long term storage SSDs.
SSDs store information through trapped charges which most certainly lose charge through quantuum tunneling as well as generalized charge leakage. As insulation loses effectiveness, the potential barrier for the charge allows for what is normally a manageable effect, much like in the CPU like you said, to become out of the scope of error correction techniques. This is a physical limitation that cannot be overcome.