[Question] Will having the Wii U unpowered damage the NAND?

[CrazySquid]

Hi, so, I decided to put my Wii U and other consoles back in their boxes.
I'm a bit worried about the NAND of my console going bad, since I did read that flash devices tend to go bad if you left them unpowered too much time.

In case the statment above is true, how much time can I safely leave my machine unplugged? How often should I turn ON my console? Thanks.

I will also ask Nintendo Costumer service to see what they say about it.

Thanks!

 

[Hayato213]

No

 

[ber71]

Electronics aren't strange to me at all but I can't see a clear answer about this subject. That depends on the exact memory type among other factors. Here in gbatemp you'll read loads of diverse opinions, but we need advice from a truly specialist on volatile storage.

 

[godreborn]

In my experience, components cam go bad from nonuse, but that's usually for something with movable parts, like a disc drive. I don't know about a nand though, but I doubt it. They do have a limited number of writes, which is why you shouldn't install game ls thete.

 

[CrazySquid]

I see, I was wondering because my Wii U is a bit old now (launch unit, so over 10 years old). It still works like the first day, but you know, I started to see a lot of systems that started to fail due to dying MLCs or data corruption (although those were Hynix units, mine is a Samsung), so... yeah, I just wanted to take care of it.

Anyway, despite this article being more recent than the manufactering date of the Wii U's NAND, is the best I have found:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention

Basically, it says that for brand-new SSDs, data retention is not a realistic problem.
But, for those SSDs that are too old and have exceeded manufacturer endurance specs (which I MAY have, since I filled my MLC a few times...) then data retention is for about a year.
So, I guess I will just power on my Wii U before a year passes, just to avoid data corruption.

"Remember that the figures presented here are for a drive that has already passed its endurance rating, so for new drives the data retention is considerably higher, typically over ten years for MLC NAND based SSDs."

 

[MochaMods]

I'm quite confident that theres nothing to worry about unless the components were kept under poor condition.