Comment by 71a54xd
3 years ago
I wonder if storing SSD's in a faraday bag or a thick steel box could prevent degradation caused by cosmic rays / errant charged particles passing through?
Curiously, acrylic plastic is one of the best materials to absorb highly energetic particles https://www.space.com/21561-space-exploration-radiation-prot...
The most practical highly-effective radiation shielding would be putting your drives in a waterproof container and storing them at the bottom of a swimming pool. That will also do a pretty good job of keeping the temperature stable and not too high.
I don't think a faraday cage would help at all to stop any actual particles with mass? It seems like even a steel box would have to be rather thick to make a meaningful dent. Astronauts on the international space station are essentially in a solid metal faraday cage, and they see speckles in their vision each time their orbit passes through weak spots in the Earth's magnetic field.
If you're really worried about cosmic rays, maybe you could try to figure out their predominant direction of travel for your location, then store your SSD in an orientation that minimizes its cross-sectional area. I naively assume they're coming from straight up?
That's like saying "let's put bulletproof vests on the ballistic gel dummies for our test on how survivable this particular bullet round is on the human body."