[Mxsmanic]

Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

I know that flash memory allows for only a limited number of write cycles, but
I'm curious as to how often this limit has actually affected people in real
life.

I've never experienced a memory-card failure of any kind [knocking on wood],
and hopefully I never will, although a simple inability to write to the card
would probably be less of a disaster than an inability to read what's written
(apparently wear and tear only impedes writing, but reading still works). I
always have several cards with me at least, and I try to cycle through them to
even out the wear and tear. I've been lucky so far.

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:09:35 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

I know that flash memory allows for only a limited number of write cycles, but
I'm curious as to how often this limit has actually affected people in real
life.

I've never experienced a memory-card failure of any kind [knocking on wood],
and hopefully I never will, although a simple inability to write to the card
would probably be less of a disaster than an inability to read what's written
(apparently wear and tear only impedes writing, but reading still works). I
always have several cards with me at least, and I try to cycle through them to
even out the wear and tear. I've been lucky so far.

I've certainly had older cards fail. But I have no way of knowing if
that was wear and tear (too many write cycles) or an actual mid-life
failure. The big problem with cards is that they are actually failing
all the time. More and more memory blocks get excluded from use, but
you don't know about it because of a kind of RAID system internal to
the card. Failure, when it finally comes, tends to be reasonably
catastrophic.

d

[Mike Rivers]

On 7/21/2012 7:09 AM, Mxsmanic wrote:
Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

I know that flash memory allows for only a limited number of write cycles, but
I'm curious as to how often this limit has actually affected people in real
life.

I see this was cross-posted to a photo web site. Those are
the people who are experiencing, or at least have
experienced memory card failure. They write a whole lot more
files than we do.

An all too common failure mode is that someone will
accidentally put the card in upside down, force it in, and
damage the connector inside the device.



I've never experienced a memory-card failure of any kind [knocking on wood],
and hopefully I never will, although a simple inability to write to the card
would probably be less of a disaster than an inability to read what's written
(apparently wear and tear only impedes writing, but reading still works). I
always have several cards with me at least, and I try to cycle through them to
even out the wear and tear. I've been lucky so far.


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[William Sommerwerck]

I once irreparably damaged a card by removing it prematurely. But I've never
had a card fail under normal use.

Flash memory includes "leveling" software that randomizes the locations data
are written to. This evens-out the gradual damage as information is erased
and overwritten.

Flash memory is good for /at least/ several thousand write cycles. * A
photographer would have to take hundreds of thousands of photographs before
even beginning to approach that limit. The shutter would fail well-before
that point.

As usual, you have it backwards. Writing is indeed the problem. If each
block of data were immediately read back and compared with what it's
supposed to be, bad blocks could be marked (as used to be done on hard
drives). But I don't think any flash memory works that way.

* The most-advanced technology permits hundreds of thousands of cycles, if
not more.

[Mxsmanic]

Mike Rivers writes:

I see this was cross-posted to a photo web site. Those are
the people who are experiencing, or at least have
experienced memory card failure. They write a whole lot more
files than we do.

Yes, but I figured that people working in audio are probably writing a lot of
memory cards these days, and perhaps in a different way that would expose
different failure modes.

[None]

"MrsManiac" wrote in message
...
Mike Rivers writes:

I see this was cross-posted to a photo web site.

Yes, but I figured that people working in audio are probably writing a lot
of
memory cards these days, and perhaps in a different way that would expose
different failure modes.

Or you figured you'd troll a group you have a history of vandalizing.
Which is the real reason? Try Occam's razor.

[nospam[_3_]]

In article ,
Soundhaspriority wrote:

In some cases, a memory requirement can be addressed by either flash or hard
drive. In the case of a Sound Devices 744T, I chose to stick with the hard
drive. My personal "feeling", which I can't substantiate with any hard info,
is that some hard drives, selected for both make and particular model, and
handled and mounted to avoid mechanical shock, are more reliable than flash
alternatives.

nonsense. flash is significantly more reliable than hard drives.

[hank alrich]

nospam wrote:

In article ,
Soundhaspriority wrote:

In some cases, a memory requirement can be addressed by either flash or hard
drive. In the case of a Sound Devices 744T, I chose to stick with the hard
drive. My personal "feeling", which I can't substantiate with any hard info,
is that some hard drives, selected for both make and particular model, and
handled and mounted to avoid mechanical shock, are more reliable than flash
alternatives.

nonsense. flash is significantly more reliable than hard drives.

As if flash memory has been deployed long enough to amke that
determination, and as if a single line of rebuttal is to be considered a
worthy reponse to a description of how and why the problems develop.

Perhaps the invalid nospam can point to a case where data has been
recovered from flash storage that appeared to become unreadable. Or
perhaps not.

--
shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/
http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic
http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri

[Mike Rivers]

On 7/21/2012 9:10 AM, William Sommerwerck wrote:

Flash memory is good for /at least/ several thousand write cycles. * A
photographer would have to take hundreds of thousands of photographs before even beginning to approach that limit. The
shutter would fail well-before
that point.

I don't know how good your stats are, but I can tell you
that digital photographers do indeed take hundreds of
thousands of pictures, and nobody "files" the memory cards
like they did with negatives and slides. They're used like
fixed memory for the most part.

The most-advanced technology permits hundreds of thousands of cycles, if
not more.

I think that may be true, but put that in practical terms,
please. We never really knew how many playings a DAT was
good for until some of them became unplayable, and we forgot
about the technology for the most part before we figured out
why they quit playing. I have 50 year old tapes and 100 year
old records that still play. Deteriorate? Sure, but I expect
that. And I doubt that I've played any of them 100,000
times. I won't live that long. But it only takes 1/30 of a
second to take a picture, so photographers take a lot of
them, most of which they never see again.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Mike Rivers]

On 7/21/2012 11:36 AM, Mxsmanic wrote:

Yes, but I figured that people working in audio are probably writing a lot of
memory cards these days, and perhaps in a different way that would expose
different failure modes.

A lot of people are indeed writing to flash memory cards
these days - just about everyone with a handheld digital
recorder. But they tend to get the largest capacity card
that their recorder can handle and just continue to use it.
generally copying recordings to a hard drive (the bigger the
better) and, when the card gets full, delete what's there
and continue to use it.

But I think the reality is that it's highly unlikely that a
card today will fail because of excess writing. There's so
much storage capacity, and a relatively small percentage of
users record at high sample rates and resolution with these
recorders. So the memory card really doesn't get all that
much use.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Mike Rivers]

On 7/21/2012 1:17 PM, None wrote:

Or you figured you'd troll a group you have a history of
vandalizing.
Which is the real reason? Try Occam's razor.

Please explain yourself. Troll? Group? Vandalizing? I only
talk down to trolls and idiots.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[William Sommerwerck]

Flash memory is good for /at least/ several thousand
write cycles. * A photographer would have to take
hundreds of thousands of photographs before even
beginning to approach that limit. The shutter would
fail well-before that point.

I don't know how good your stats are, but I can tell you
that digital photographers do indeed take hundreds of
thousands of pictures...

Shutter are spec'd for a life cycle of 100,000 to 300,000 (or so) shots.
//When// a particular shuter fails, of course, varies.

About 15 years ago a TIME photographer stopped by to take my photo for TIME
Digital. The shutter in one of his not-top-of-the-line Nikons failed, and he
had to switch.

[David Taylor]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

As far as I know, never. Mind you, during th years I've moved on from
30 MB CF cards, through 512 MB CF, to 1 GB SD and up to 8 GB SD, so
maybe I've never used one card enough to wear it out. I don't write
much video though.

David

[Bruce[_9_]]

David Taylor wrote:
"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

As far as I know, never. Mind you, during th years I've moved on from
30 MB CF cards, through 512 MB CF, to 1 GB SD and up to 8 GB SD, so
maybe I've never used one card enough to wear it out. I don't write
much video though.


The only memory "cards" that have given me problems were Micro Drives.
They were miniature hard drives, originally made by IBM but later sold
on or possibly licensed to other manufacturers. I think they were
used in the original Apple iPod.

They were fitted into a case that was the same size as a Compact Flash
card but about 50% thicker. Most, but not all CF-compatible devices
could use them. They were extremely troublesome. I had about eight
in all and all except two failed.

[Joe Kotroczo]

On 22/07/2012 18:23, Bruce wrote:

(...)
The only memory "cards" that have given me problems were Micro Drives.
They were miniature hard drives, originally made by IBM but later sold
on or possibly licensed to other manufacturers. I think they were
used in the original Apple iPod.

Nah, the iPod used 1.8 inch hard disks. Micro Drives are 1 inch hard disks.


--
Illegitimi non carborundum

[Bruce[_9_]]

Joe Kotroczo wrote:

On 22/07/2012 18:23, Bruce wrote:

(...)
The only memory "cards" that have given me problems were Micro Drives.
They were miniature hard drives, originally made by IBM but later sold
on or possibly licensed to other manufacturers. I think they were
used in the original Apple iPod.

Nah, the iPod used 1.8 inch hard disks. Micro Drives are 1 inch hard disks.


Thanks.

[Sean Conolly]

"hank alrich" wrote in message
...
nospam wrote:

In article ,
Soundhaspriority wrote:

In some cases, a memory requirement can be addressed by either flash or
hard
drive. In the case of a Sound Devices 744T, I chose to stick with the
hard
drive. My personal "feeling", which I can't substantiate with any hard
info,
is that some hard drives, selected for both make and particular model,
and
handled and mounted to avoid mechanical shock, are more reliable than
flash
alternatives.

nonsense. flash is significantly more reliable than hard drives.

As if flash memory has been deployed long enough to amke that
determination, and as if a single line of rebuttal is to be considered a
worthy reponse to a description of how and why the problems develop.

Well, it does happen in my area - largish enterprise databases. To improve
the OLTP processing speed (lots of small transactions) people were using
flash drives for redo & undo buffers (which isn't the best fit since the
read/write ratio is around 1:1, but the write speed is still 2 or 3 times
faster than disk). With a high enough transaction rate the life span of MLC
drives is less than a year.

SLC drives in the same application should last over 10 years. I sure hope so
because we just bought six of them at $3K each, discounted!

Sean

[nospam[_3_]]

In article , Bruce
wrote:

The only memory "cards" that have given me problems were Micro Drives.
They were miniature hard drives, originally made by IBM but later sold
on or possibly licensed to other manufacturers. I think they were
used in the original Apple iPod.

nope.

the original ipod used 1.8" hard drives, which are still used in the
current ipod classic.

the ipod mini used microdrives, and because apple got a very good deal
on them, many people bought an ipod mini for its microdrive because it
was *cheaper* than buying the microdrive by itself. the empty ipod mini
carcasses were later sold on ebay.

the ipod shuffle was the first ipod to use flash, followed by the ipod
nano which replaced the ipod mini, and later the ipod touch, which is
an iphone without the phone.

They were fitted into a case that was the same size as a Compact Flash
card but about 50% thicker. Most, but not all CF-compatible devices
could use them.

nope. a microdrive was a standard compact flash type ii card.

They were extremely troublesome. I had about eight
in all and all except two failed.

yes they were troublesome. it used to be said if you dropped one, don't
bother picking it up because it probably no longer works.

[Savageduck]

On 2012-07-22 12:35:32 -0700, nospam said:

In article , Bruce
wrote:

The only memory "cards" that have given me problems were Micro Drives.
They were miniature hard drives, originally made by IBM but later sold
on or possibly licensed to other manufacturers. I think they were
used in the original Apple iPod.

nope.

the original ipod used 1.8" hard drives, which are still used in the
current ipod classic.

the ipod mini used microdrives, and because apple got a very good deal
on them, many people bought an ipod mini for its microdrive because it
was *cheaper* than buying the microdrive by itself. the empty ipod mini
carcasses were later sold on ebay.

the ipod shuffle was the first ipod to use flash, followed by the ipod
nano which replaced the ipod mini, and later the ipod touch, which is
an iphone without the phone.

They were fitted into a case that was the same size as a Compact Flash
card but about 50% thicker. Most, but not all CF-compatible devices
could use them.

nope. a microdrive was a standard compact flash type ii card.

They were extremely troublesome. I had about eight
in all and all except two failed.

yes they were troublesome. it used to be said if you dropped one, don't
bother picking it up because it probably no longer works.

Yup!
I still have a functioning Hitachi 2GB Microdrive which came with their
PCMCIA adaptor.
The current use I have found for it is to load it with MP3's and use it
as a media device via the chrome covered PCMCIA slot in the dash of my
Mercedes E350 (found directly below the volume control knob) most
Mercedes owners have no idea that it exists.
Quite neat actually. It also works if I use my old sub-1GB CF cards.
Beats the hell out of burning CDs.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

[Arny Krueger]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

You are talking about a moving target because the life of flash memory
continues to increase. It was on the order of thousands of erase/write
operations a few years back, and now it is on the order of 100'000s.

According to Wikipedia:

a.. SLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100k cycles (Samsung
OneNAND KFW4G16Q2M)
b.. MLC NAND flash used to be rated at about 5-10k cycles (Samsung
K9G8G08U0M) but is now typically 1k - 3k cycles
c.. TLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100-500 cycles
d.. SLC floating-gate NOR flash has typical endurance rating of 100k to 1M
cycles (Numonyx M58BW 100k; Spansion S29CD016J 1,000k)
e.. MLC floating-gate NOR flash has typical endurance rating of 100k
cycles (Numonyx J3 flash)


I know that flash memory allows for only a limited number of write cycles,
but
I'm curious as to how often this limit has actually affected people in
real
life.

I currently have 4 flash-based SSDs in service. None are being hit
particularly hard. IOW they are not parts of highly active file servers.
They are typically in computers that only receive a few hours of use per
week.

I've never experienced a memory-card failure of any kind [knocking on
wood],

Lucky you! But, all of the failures I've seen were of conventional system
RAM.

and hopefully I never will, although a simple inability to write to the
card
would probably be less of a disaster than an inability to read what's
written
(apparently wear and tear only impedes writing, but reading still works).
I
always have several cards with me at least, and I try to cycle through
them to
even out the wear and tear. I've been lucky so far.

IME writing, while time consuming is not the big exposure.

The trick of the day often relates to reading the data later on. Memory
write cycles seems to have nothing to do with it. It's all about the USB
interfaces.

I just had a client who needed to restore some backups after a total loss
type hard drive crash. His USB flash drive had about 9 GB of data. It
blue-screened the laptop its data needed to be restored to after a few
minutes of loading. Its reliability for just reading was poor on 3 other
desktop systems. The drive disconnected itself from the system several times
during attempts at restoring it, and on one machine that normally works
well, it would just sit in a loop attaching, crashing, and re-attaching. On
another older laptop the whole 9 GB flowed to its hard drive (a flash-based
SSD) just fine in one clean shot. I moved the data to the target machine
over a wireless LAN without incident.

YMMV.

I just ha

[Arny Krueger]

"nospam" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Soundhaspriority wrote:

In some cases, a memory requirement can be addressed by either flash or
hard
drive. In the case of a Sound Devices 744T, I chose to stick with the
hard
drive. My personal "feeling", which I can't substantiate with any hard
info,
is that some hard drives, selected for both make and particular model,
and
handled and mounted to avoid mechanical shock, are more reliable than
flash
alternatives.

nonsense. flash is significantly more reliable than hard drives.

Current data suggests easily twice as reliable.

[William Sommerwerck]

Current data suggest easily twice as reliable.

Under what conditions?

I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly use flash memory
for the boot drive. But I guarantee there will be nothing on that drive that
has to be continually re- or over-written.

All the user-created files will be on a conventional hard drive -- unless I
can be convinced that flash drive is sufficiently reliable.

Of course, I create a bootable copy of my current computer's drive every one
to three weeks, and keep intermediate copies of important files on a Zip
drive. I also periodically back up all user data to an external hard drive.

By the way, my Seagate hard drives are warranteed for five years and have
given me no trouble. Name a consumer flash drive that has that long a
warranty.

[Neil Gould]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Current data suggest easily twice as reliable.

Under what conditions?

I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly use flash
memory for the boot drive. But I guarantee there will be nothing on
that drive that has to be continually re- or over-written.

Interesting. What OS are you using that guarantees no re-or over-writing?

--
best regards,

Neil

[Alan Browne]

On 2012-07-23 09:03 , William Sommerwerck wrote:
Current data suggest easily twice as reliable.

Under what conditions?

I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly use flash memory
for the boot drive. But I guarantee there will be nothing on that drive that
has to be continually re- or over-written.

Pretty hard for the "boot" (system) drive to avoid being written on as
the system operates.

All the user-created files will be on a conventional hard drive -- unless I
can be convinced that flash drive is sufficiently reliable.

Of course, I create a bootable copy of my current computer's drive every one
to three weeks, and keep intermediate copies of important files on a Zip
drive. I also periodically back up all user data to an external hard drive.

If you don't back up to two external locations your data means nothing
to you.

By the way, my Seagate hard drives are warranteed for five years and have
given me no trouble. Name a consumer flash drive that has that long a
warranty.

The warranty on the Seagate drives is meaningless. When the drive fails
you get another drive. Big deal. You don't get your data back and that
is typically many more times valuable than the drive.

I've yet to hear of a MacBook Air user having issues with their flash
disk. The MBA has been out there for over 4 years - and it only had 64
GB of SSD making it a candidate for early failure (due to the wear
leveling management).

--
"Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities."
-Samuel Clemens.

[William Sommerwerck]

I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly
use flash memory for the boot drive. But I guarantee there
will be nothing on that drive that has to be continually
re- or over-written.

Interesting. What OS are you using that guarantees no
re-or over-writing?

READ WHAT I WROTE!

[William Sommerwerck]

Of course, I create a bootable copy of my current computer's
drive every one to three weeks, and keep intermediate copies
of important files on a Zip drive. I also periodically back up all
user data to an external hard drive.

If you don't back up to two external locations your data means
nothing to you.

Do you mean outside the house? If so, point valid and taken. If that isn't
what you meant, READ WHAT I WROTE.

Why do people insist on reading what they think is there, rather than what
actually is?


By the way, my Seagate hard drives are warranteed for five
years and have given me no trouble. Name a consumer flash
drive that has that long a warranty.

The warranty on the Seagate drives is meaningless. When the
drive fails you get another drive. Big deal. You don't get your
data back and that is typically many more times valuable
than the drive.

You didn't answer my question.


I have yet to hear of a MacBook Air user having issues with their flash
disk. The MBA has been out there for over 4 years - and it only had 64
GB of SSD making it a candidate for early failure (due to the wear
leveling management).

Well... Mac Book Air owners don't actually /do/ anything with their
computers. They just carry it around to show off, and occasionally some
piddly thing with it.

[Neil Gould]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly
use flash memory for the boot drive. But I guarantee there
will be nothing on that drive that has to be continually
re- or over-written.

Interesting. What OS are you using that guarantees no
re-or over-writing?

READ WHAT I WROTE!

MY RESPONSE WAS SPECIFICALLY IN REFERENCE TO WHAT YOU WROTE!

Or, don't you know how an OS works?

--
best regards,

Neil

[Alan Browne]

On 2012-07-23 09:46 , William Sommerwerck wrote:
Of course, I create a bootable copy of my current computer's
drive every one to three weeks, and keep intermediate copies
of important files on a Zip drive. I also periodically back up all
user data to an external hard drive.

If you don't back up to two external locations your data means
nothing to you.

Do you mean outside the house? If so, point valid and taken. If that isn't
what you meant, READ WHAT I WROTE.

"an external hard drive". That's a weak backup strategy no matter where
the physical location is.

Why do people insist on reading what they think is there, rather than what
actually is?


By the way, my Seagate hard drives are warranteed for five
years and have given me no trouble. Name a consumer flash
drive that has that long a warranty.

The warranty on the Seagate drives is meaningless. When the
drive fails you get another drive. Big deal. You don't get your
data back and that is typically many more times valuable
than the drive.

You didn't answer my question.

I certainly did. But I guess you can't read. The point is that the 5
year warranty does absolutely nothing to protect your data. In my case
data represents many thousands of hours of work. Dependence on hard
disks (or any storage) is not part of the plan.

The warranty on the drive is not worth 1 hour of my time. The cost of a
2 TB hard disk is not worth 1 hour of my time.

That you're fooled into thinking that a 5 year warranty is some
indication of quality or that these drives will last longer than a drive
announced with 1 yr warranty just indicates your general innocence.

A 5 year warranty is in fact an accounting provision. They charge a
higher price and allocate the cash to the warranty pool. As drives are
shipped to replace failed drives, the warranty pool money is transferred
from the warranty account to the operations account.

Nothing in that protects your data of course. So just abandon all hope
that warranties mean endurance.

I have yet to hear of a MacBook Air user having issues with their flash
disk. The MBA has been out there for over 4 years - and it only had 64
GB of SSD making it a candidate for early failure (due to the wear
leveling management).

Well... Mac Book Air owners don't actually /do/ anything with their
computers. They just carry it around to show off, and occasionally some
piddly thing with it.

Goodby troll.

--
"Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities."
-Samuel Clemens.

[Scott Dorsey]

Neil Gould wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly
use flash memory for the boot drive. But I guarantee there
will be nothing on that drive that has to be continually
re- or over-written.

Interesting. What OS are you using that guarantees no
re-or over-writing?

READ WHAT I WROTE!

MY RESPONSE WAS SPECIFICALLY IN REFERENCE TO WHAT YOU WROTE!

Or, don't you know how an OS works?

Neil, he's saying that he's using it in a read-only (or read-mostly)
application, so it doesn't matter what the OS does.

This is really the perfect application for the things.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Neil Gould]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly
use flash memory for the boot drive. But I guarantee there
will be nothing on that drive that has to be continually
re- or over-written.

Interesting. What OS are you using that guarantees no
re-or over-writing?

READ WHAT I WROTE!

MY RESPONSE WAS SPECIFICALLY IN REFERENCE TO WHAT YOU WROTE!

Or, don't you know how an OS works?

Neil, he's saying that he's using it in a read-only (or read-mostly)
application, so it doesn't matter what the OS does.

It very much matters what the OS does, unless one can significantly
reconfigure the OS or use an OS that doesn't depend on virtual memory. To my
understanding, neither has been made easier with more recent OSs.

--
best regards,

Neil

[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
Neil Gould wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly
use flash memory for the boot drive. But I guarantee there
will be nothing on that drive that has to be continually
re- or over-written.

Interesting. What OS are you using that guarantees no
re-or over-writing?

READ WHAT I WROTE!

MY RESPONSE WAS SPECIFICALLY IN REFERENCE TO WHAT YOU WROTE!

Or, don't you know how an OS works?

Neil, he's saying that he's using it in a read-only (or read-mostly)
application, so it doesn't matter what the OS does.

It very much matters what the OS does, unless one can significantly
reconfigure the OS or use an OS that doesn't depend on virtual memory. To my
understanding, neither has been made easier with more recent OSs.

No, he's not paging or swapping to the flash drive. That is instant death.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Chuck[_10_]]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:46:21 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:


"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

You are talking about a moving target because the life of flash memory
continues to increase. It was on the order of thousands of erase/write
operations a few years back, and now it is on the order of 100'000s.

According to Wikipedia:

a.. SLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100k cycles (Samsung
OneNAND KFW4G16Q2M)
b.. MLC NAND flash used to be rated at about 5-10k cycles (Samsung
K9G8G08U0M) but is now typically 1k - 3k cycles
c.. TLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100-500 cycles
d.. SLC floating-gate NOR flash has typical endurance rating of 100k to 1M
cycles (Numonyx M58BW 100k; Spansion S29CD016J 1,000k)
e.. MLC floating-gate NOR flash has typical endurance rating of 100k
cycles (Numonyx J3 flash)


I know that flash memory allows for only a limited number of write cycles,
but
I'm curious as to how often this limit has actually affected people in
real
life.

I currently have 4 flash-based SSDs in service. None are being hit
particularly hard. IOW they are not parts of highly active file servers.
They are typically in computers that only receive a few hours of use per
week.

I've never experienced a memory-card failure of any kind [knocking on
wood],

Lucky you! But, all of the failures I've seen were of conventional system
RAM.

and hopefully I never will, although a simple inability to write to the
card
would probably be less of a disaster than an inability to read what's
written
(apparently wear and tear only impedes writing, but reading still works).
I
always have several cards with me at least, and I try to cycle through
them to
even out the wear and tear. I've been lucky so far.

IME writing, while time consuming is not the big exposure.

The trick of the day often relates to reading the data later on. Memory
write cycles seems to have nothing to do with it. It's all about the USB
interfaces.

I just had a client who needed to restore some backups after a total loss
type hard drive crash. His USB flash drive had about 9 GB of data. It
blue-screened the laptop its data needed to be restored to after a few
minutes of loading. Its reliability for just reading was poor on 3 other
desktop systems. The drive disconnected itself from the system several times
during attempts at restoring it, and on one machine that normally works
well, it would just sit in a loop attaching, crashing, and re-attaching. On
another older laptop the whole 9 GB flowed to its hard drive (a flash-based
SSD) just fine in one clean shot. I moved the data to the target machine
over a wireless LAN without incident.

YMMV.

I just ha



I've seen the interface chip in thumb drives short and smoke. Chuck

[Floyd L. Davidson]

"Neil Gould" wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:
Current data suggest easily twice as reliable.

Under what conditions?

I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly use flash
memory for the boot drive. But I guarantee there will be nothing on
that drive that has to be continually re- or over-written.

Interesting. What OS are you using that guarantees no re-or over-writing?

A typical UNIX based OS need not even mount the boot
drive, much less make it writable by users or by the
system at boot time. For example Linux typically is
booted from a partition that is then often, but not
necessarily, mounted at /boot.

It is also very common with UNIX based OS's to have the
root filesystem read only. It is also not uncommon to
have a separate filesystem for /usr, and to also have
that write protected.

Typically /home, /var, and /tmp are read/write
filesystems, or symbolic links to directories on a
partition mounted rw.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

[Floyd L. Davidson]

Alan Browne wrote:
On 2012-07-23 09:03 , William Sommerwerck wrote:
Current data suggest easily twice as reliable.

Under what conditions?

I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly use flash memory
for the boot drive. But I guarantee there will be nothing on that drive that
has to be continually re- or over-written.

Pretty hard for the "boot" (system) drive to avoid being written on as
the system operates.

There is no reason that it needs to be written to. In
fact it is very easy to have a system that boots from a
DVD!

Most Linux distributions provide a "live DVD" which can
be used to demonstrate the OS, also as a installation
disk, and then also as a rescue disk.

Any OS that cannot do that is abjectly insecure.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

[Mike Rivers]

Hmmmm . . . What is it that we were talking about here? My
memory seems to have failed me.

Can I get a new card for my brain?

--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Steve King]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually experienced a memory card
failure due to simple wear and tear?

You are talking about a moving target because the life of flash memory
continues to increase. It was on the order of thousands of erase/write
operations a few years back, and now it is on the order of 100'000s.

According to Wikipedia:

a.. SLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100k cycles (Samsung
OneNAND KFW4G16Q2M)
b.. MLC NAND flash used to be rated at about 5-10k cycles (Samsung
K9G8G08U0M) but is now typically 1k - 3k cycles
c.. TLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100-500 cycles
d.. SLC floating-gate NOR flash has typical endurance rating of 100k to
1M cycles (Numonyx M58BW 100k; Spansion S29CD016J 1,000k)
e.. MLC floating-gate NOR flash has typical endurance rating of 100k
cycles (Numonyx J3 flash)


I know that flash memory allows for only a limited number of write
cycles, but
I'm curious as to how often this limit has actually affected people in
real
life.

I currently have 4 flash-based SSDs in service. None are being hit
particularly hard. IOW they are not parts of highly active file servers.
They are typically in computers that only receive a few hours of use per
week.

I've never experienced a memory-card failure of any kind [knocking on
wood],

Lucky you! But, all of the failures I've seen were of conventional system
RAM.

and hopefully I never will, although a simple inability to write to the
card
would probably be less of a disaster than an inability to read what's
written
(apparently wear and tear only impedes writing, but reading still works).
I
always have several cards with me at least, and I try to cycle through
them to
even out the wear and tear. I've been lucky so far.

IME writing, while time consuming is not the big exposure.

The trick of the day often relates to reading the data later on. Memory
write cycles seems to have nothing to do with it. It's all about the USB
interfaces.

I just had a client who needed to restore some backups after a total loss
type hard drive crash. His USB flash drive had about 9 GB of data. It
blue-screened the laptop its data needed to be restored to after a few
minutes of loading. Its reliability for just reading was poor on 3 other
desktop systems. The drive disconnected itself from the system several
times during attempts at restoring it, and on one machine that normally
works well, it would just sit in a loop attaching, crashing, and
re-attaching. On another older laptop the whole 9 GB flowed to its hard
drive (a flash-based SSD) just fine in one clean shot. I moved the data
to the target machine over a wireless LAN without incident.

YMMV.

I just ha

Would be interesting to know your client's blood pressure swings as the
recovery attempts/failures went on;-) This is a good story to remind me
that if a USB Flash drive fails to read on one machine to keep trying.

Steve King

[George Kerby]

On 7/23/12 8:46 AM, in article , "William
Sommerwerck" wrote:

Of course, I create a bootable copy of my current computer's
drive every one to three weeks, and keep intermediate copies
of important files on a Zip drive. I also periodically back up all
user data to an external hard drive.

If you don't back up to two external locations your data means
nothing to you.

Do you mean outside the house? If so, point valid and taken. If that isn't
what you meant, READ WHAT I WROTE.

Why do people insist on reading what they think is there, rather than what
actually is?


By the way, my Seagate hard drives are warranteed for five
years and have given me no trouble. Name a consumer flash
drive that has that long a warranty.

The warranty on the Seagate drives is meaningless. When the
drive fails you get another drive. Big deal. You don't get your
data back and that is typically many more times valuable
than the drive.

You didn't answer my question.


I have yet to hear of a MacBook Air user having issues with their flash
disk. The MBA has been out there for over 4 years - and it only had 64
GB of SSD making it a candidate for early failure (due to the wear
leveling management).

Well... Mac Book Air owners don't actually /do/ anything with their
computers. They just carry it around to show off, and occasionally some
piddly thing with it.


Someone **** in your Cheerios this morning?

[Savageduck]

On 2012-07-23 08:57:52 -0700, George Kerby said:




On 7/23/12 8:46 AM, in article , "William
Sommerwerck" wrote:

Of course, I create a bootable copy of my current computer's
drive every one to three weeks, and keep intermediate copies
of important files on a Zip drive. I also periodically back up all
user data to an external hard drive.

If you don't back up to two external locations your data means
nothing to you.

Do you mean outside the house? If so, point valid and taken. If that isn't
what you meant, READ WHAT I WROTE.

Why do people insist on reading what they think is there, rather than what
actually is?


By the way, my Seagate hard drives are warranteed for five
years and have given me no trouble. Name a consumer flash
drive that has that long a warranty.

The warranty on the Seagate drives is meaningless. When the
drive fails you get another drive. Big deal. You don't get your
data back and that is typically many more times valuable
than the drive.

You didn't answer my question.


I have yet to hear of a MacBook Air user having issues with their flash
disk. The MBA has been out there for over 4 years - and it only had 64
GB of SSD making it a candidate for early failure (due to the wear
leveling management).

Well... Mac Book Air owners don't actually /do/ anything with their
computers. They just carry it around to show off, and occasionally some
piddly thing with it.


Someone **** in your Cheerios this morning?

Naah! He just discovered who ****ed in his crib when he was a baby.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

[Arny Krueger]

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
Current data suggest easily twice as reliable.

Under what conditions?

General use.

I'm about to buy a new computer, and will almost certainly use flash
memory
for the boot drive. But I guarantee there will be nothing on that drive
that
has to be continually re- or over-written.

One of the worst cases of files that get continually over-writen are cache
files.

Here's an article about the use of flash for that purpose:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tomarcher/ar...boost-q-a.aspx

"Q: Won't this wear out the drive?
A: Nope. We're aware of the lifecycle issues with flash drives and are smart
about how and when we do our writes to the device. Our research shows that
we will get at least 10+ years out of flash devices that we support."

All the user-created files will be on a conventional hard drive -- unless
I
can be convinced that flash drive is sufficiently reliable.

For that we have mirrored SSDs.


Of course, I create a bootable copy of my current computer's drive every
one
to three weeks, and keep intermediate copies of important files on a Zip
drive. I also periodically back up all user data to an external hard
drive.

By the way, my Seagate hard drives are warranteed for five years and have
given me no trouble. Name a consumer flash drive that has that long a
warranty.

http://www.corsair.com/en/support/warranty/

Flash Voyager®, Flash ReadOut, TurboFlash, Flash Survivor® and Flash Voyager
Mini USB flash drive products all have a 10 year warranty

[nospam[_3_]]

In article , Scott Dorsey
wrote:

No, he's not paging or swapping to the flash drive. That is instant death.

nonsense. millions of macs have swap on ssd and run just fine and have
for several years.