A worn-out SSD is supposed to be able to preserve its data for one year for consumer SSDs or three months for enterprise SSDs (not at the same temperature). That's the industry-standard threshold of data retention used to determine how "worn out" is considered end-of-life. A SSD that hasn't burned through its entire write endurance will have considerably longer data retention.

We're not talking about write endurance though? From what I've read, unpowered SSDs only hold the data for a year or two, regardless of the age of the drive.

> From what I've read, unpowered SSDs only hold the data for a year or two, regardless of the age of the drive.

You've probably been reading bad sources. There is a very real relationship between the number of P/E cycles that a piece of flash memory has been through and the unpowered data retention it can provide. Lots of publications and even more random forum posts repeat statements about SSD data retention without including the caveat that the numbers apply specifically to worn-out drives. Brand new flash memory can easily have unpowered data retention in excess of a decade.

If you're reading a source that claims SSD unpowered data retention is only a year, and that source does not qualify that with a statement about the prior condition of the drive, you should assume that you're reading another misinterpretation of the JEDEC standards.

You can buy LTO tapes from Amazon and office suppliers easily.

The drives and the software are the problem.

Drives are very expensive and there isn’t much non enterprise software to manage tape backups.

Enterprise software is expensive and you won’t likely be even able to buy it and since cloud storage and NAS became commoditized all the backup software that targeted small businesses pretty much either died off or went cloud backup only.