Dropped loot was gone

[Overdose]

I made some pretty good loot last week; but it was too much to carry it all, so I wanted to wait for my buddy to join. I dropped some of the less valuable stuff in a backpack where I logged out, somewhere in the forest. Today, it was gone.

Now, are there player systematically combing the entire map to hopefully find dropped stashes or is the despawn time of dropped items (on public servers) <48h?

[ColdNhungry]

Each item has its own despawn timer that is part of the clean up process of the loot cycling, backpacks only lasting a few hours, I'm guessing regardless of their contents. 6 hours or so. Out of the few hundred items in the game, none of them last beyond a few hours except for a dozen or so items, mostly containers of some sort (tents, cases, chests, barrels etc.) which can last 7-45 days depending. You best option is to find yourself a shovel in a shed and bury a stash in one of various containers somewhere out of sight. If you're on the coast of chern for example, you'll probably find a drybag backpack pretty quick checking the small wooden boats along the water (or the smaller drysacks). Buried stashes last 14 days iirc.

[Overdose]

Ah, thats good to know.
Just started DayZ again after a long time; read somewhere that the despawn time was improved in the latest patches.
Thanks!