[asdff]

Would an SSD even function after 1000 years? Unless sealed, I imagine ambient moisture would do a number inside the drive. The same is true for books of course, but we still have 1000 year old books that have lasted by sitting on a shelf in churches and temples, etc., without any specific care until recent history.

The nice part of a book in an apocalyptic scenario is that you can copy it even if you don't know the language. You don't need a special tool for this, only one capable of marking a surface. It wouldn't be fun or fast, but it's possible and it's what monks did for centuries. Would archeologists 1000 years from now be lucky enough to find a SATA cable too?

[mrob]

It doesn't really matter if the SSD as a whole still works, because after 1000 years you'll never recover the data via the normal interface. Modern MLC flash is often specified for less than 1 year data retention, and even SLC is unlikely to make it to 1000 years. Attempting to read it will only make things worse ("read disturb"). The best hope of saving the data is with some future nanotech that directly probes each floating gate transistor and counts the electrons, and reverse engineering all the error correction and wear leveling.

[EthanHeilman]

I would assume they would read the SSD not by powering it on and plugging it into to a computer but by disassembling it and physically imaging the physical structure. This would also bypass the all the write leveling infrastructure allowing them to recover deleted data. It reminds me of the current techniques of using x-rays to read writing on the odd scraps of paper used to bind a book [0].

[0]: "X-rays reveal 1,300-year-old writings inside later bookbindings" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/04/x-rays-reveal-...