Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Marks DTM Calib]

Do NOT use SSD for any media or files you want to keep 

Why though? value your view as well others on all things technical.

Personally I dont trust any hard drives, for various reasons.

I dump them on a HD, copy them to SSD to work/sort with and then copy back to a backup drive.

Flash, by the very nature of its design, is forgetful...........and bits will begin to flip from the second data is written.

To get around this, the suppliers fit controllers to interface to the flash (there is never direct access to the flash chips) which adds extra functionality to reduce this impact. This includes error correction and wear levelling (as flash also get worse every time you write to it), it also splits the part in blocks, you never write to bytes, so you might only update a 32bit line, but a whole block gets read and written......and every time you write you write to two blocks......one being the data and the other the FAT.

But, what happens is that over time more and more bits flip, and there reaches a point where the error correction falls over and a block is lost.......game over for that file.......and the whole partition if its the FAT table.

So the way I drive the use of flash in products is based on a few rules:

1) Work on the basis you never write to it, if you do, limit it to once a minute (the typical life is 800k writes per block....very easy to hit this if not careful)
2) If you need to write to it regularly then use a separate replaceable part
3) Ensure you have AT LEAST 25% spare capacity at all times to allow for better wear levelling
4) If you can, find a part that supports static wear levelling (Silicon Systems had the Pats on this, they got gobbled by Western Digital)

[Mr Skrunts]

I was AMD all the way up to this PC.

Last one was AM3+ 8950 which I still have (as well as the rest of them) and had my 1060 in it. I am not a massive (intence gamer) but the PC did well a coped with most things.

Then I aquired a 2nd hand I7 4790K ASUS RANGER Z97 and added 16GB 1833Mhz and again another 1060, being rather impressed with the Z97 I went on to build the current i7 8900k and took the 1060 out of the 8950.

The PC has expanded since I built it 3 years ago ( a to my self birthday pressie (couldnt find a low mileage Elite for that years pressie)) it had the 250GB M2,& 4TB drive added, then a 6TB was added and the 4TB Got changed to a 6TB as you do and the old parts got fitted in other PCs as a backup.  I hate people coming to the house so never sell any of it.

But now its just boredom, I reckon I have £2K+ invested in this PC and if I build an ultimate PC it would cost more than my 1st house did.

So instead of a new CPU/Mobo I ended up with a bigger faster M2 and doubled the RAM

Next year.  GPU & Monitor upgrade.

It should make my 3D Tetris rock

[Mr Skrunts]

Do NOT use SSD for any media or files you want to keep 

Why though? value your view as well others on all things technical.

Personally I dont trust any hard drives, for various reasons.

I dump them on a HD, copy them to SSD to work/sort with and then copy back to a backup drive.

Flash, by the very nature of its design, is forgetful...........and bits will begin to flip from the second data is written.

To get around this, the suppliers fit controllers to interface to the flash (there is never direct access to the flash chips) which adds extra functionality to reduce this impact. This includes error correction and wear levelling (as flash also get worse every time you write to it), it also splits the part in blocks, you never write to bytes, so you might only update a 32bit line, but a whole block gets read and written......and every time you write you write to two blocks......one being the data and the other the FAT.

But, what happens is that over time more and more bits flip, and there reaches a point where the error correction falls over and a block is lost.......game over for that file.......and the whole partition if its the FAT table.

So the way I drive the use of flash in products is based on a few rules:

1) Work on the basis you never write to it, if you do, limit it to once a minute (the typical life is 800k writes per block....very easy to hit this if not careful)
2) If you need to write to it regularly then use a separate replaceable part
3) Ensure you have AT LEAST 25% spare capacity at all times to allow for better wear levelling
4) If you can, find a part that supports static wear levelling (Silicon Systems had the Pats on this, they got gobbled by Western Digital)

Thats interesting and I knew nothing of it.  As they are are relativly new components I hadnt put 100% trust in them yet, but then again I am the same with the larger HDD's

The other thing I noted was the capacity options. 250, 500, 1TB, 2,4, then 8TB when I saw this I wondered if they were using data compression and I havent trusted that since I compressed files under Win95 and lost the lot.

Like they say, we learn something new every day, today I learnt loads.  Thankyou

[Marks DTM Calib]

I have been working with it since the early 00s, I even got a free trip to Bombay to explain to the head of Reliance Telecom why their network was killing it in months...........and how we were changing the management of it to address this.

More recently, Tesla are having to replace stacks of modules due to flash wear out, it hit Cisco to on their routers......and many others!

Dashcams are a great example, the flash does not last more than a few years.

It is good at only one thing, fast access times and possibly read also, its inferior in every other way

[Mr Skrunts]

Makes sence regards SDCards/dash cams.  Odd 1 or 2 of mine in the past have been a bit random.

[TheBoy]

and there reaches a point where the error correction falls over and a block is lost.......game over for that file.......and the whole partition if its the FAT table.

To clarify for others, a "block" in this case may not (very likely wont) match a "block" that the OS sees the storage as. So am unreadable NAND block might cover several files.  Or more critical data.

In addition, SSDs and similar do background tasks to clean up behind them, and these can add wear.  Crucial drives of yesteryear were particularly bad at self destruction themselves during this, or suffering backlogs in this process that would crash the OS.


OOF ran for a while with both its webserver and it database on SSDs - Sandisk Ultra II 960Gb, couldn't afford enterprise grade ones - very successfully, but the wear rate was high as the webserver logs requests to its disks, and the database obviously hammers its disks.

[TheBoy]

Tesla are having to replace stacks of modules due to flash wear out, it hit Cisco to on their routers......and many others!

Tesla seem to have this issue in their overgrown ipads intotainment systems, and tried to hide it with firmwares too late in the day to reduce writes.

I'm surprised you get Cisco kit to last long enough without self destructing, to suffer flash issues .  Which reminds me, I need to get down to Londonium again to replace more bits in one...   ...or I could open the window, and chuck it in the river

[TheBoy]

I was AMD all the way up to this PC.

Last one was AM3+ 8950 which I still have (as well as the rest of them) and had my 1060 in it. I am not a massive (intence gamer) but the PC did well a coped with most things.

Then I aquired a 2nd hand I7 4790K ASUS RANGER Z97 and added 16GB 1833Mhz and again another 1060, being rather impressed with the Z97 I went on to build the current i7 8900k and took the 1060 out of the 8950.

The PC has expanded since I built it 3 years ago ( a to my self birthday pressie (couldnt find a low mileage Elite for that years pressie)) it had the 250GB M2,& 4TB drive added, then a 6TB was added and the 4TB Got changed to a 6TB as you do and the old parts got fitted in other PCs as a backup.  I hate people coming to the house so never sell any of it.

But now its just boredom, I reckon I have £2K+ invested in this PC and if I build an ultimate PC it would cost more than my 1st house did.

So instead of a new CPU/Mobo I ended up with a bigger faster M2 and doubled the RAM

Next year.  GPU & Monitor upgrade.

It should make my 3D Tetris rock

I used to stay cutting edge on PCs, though was lucky enough to always be able to offload my cast-off parts for more than what I paid for them.  My PCs were always being upgraded, to the point that I was having to replace the cases due to the (crap) screw holes stripping.

One day, probably around the Core Duo era, it just dawned on me, I just didn't need to, and what I had would last fine.

Nowadays, a bad case of CBA plus a sensitivity to fan noise, means I just skip dive for cast-off branded ones .  Even then, normally I still suffer CBA, and stick with what I have

[TheBoy]

LOL, just looked up the dell service tag of the PC on this desk....

Vostro 460
Shipped 3rd June 2011

Looks like it must have been one from one of Bro's shops, looking at shipping details


Also, I was wrong about the CPU, its not Ivy Bridge, its an i5-2400, which makes it a generation earlier, Sandy Bridge.

[Mr Skrunts]

All interesting stuff.

So out of interest what does the OOF server system consist of, have allways wondered what has kept us all online over the years.  I know it has kept you busy at times doing updates etc.

i have visions in my head of what it looks like.

[LC0112G]

My recent upgrade to 10600K/10700 was the first since about 2015. Until lockdown 1 I was running Intel core 2 duo with a Q9650 which is a quad core.  The Q9650 was an upgrade from a T9500 built in 2010 ish. However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

I eventually admitted defeat and went for the recent builds. They're probably 3-4 times faster for the programs I run. As far as I can tell about half of that is due to CPU speed improvements, and half to CPU core streamlining/instruction parrallism. However, I have basically skipped 10 generations of i3/5/7/9 processors.

I just don't see the point in changing everything every year just to get a 5-10% speed increase. Intel haven't even released the 11th gen stuff yet, but they appear to be saying the 12th gen stuff is due before Christmas. Barking.

[TheBoy]

All interesting stuff.

So out of interest what does the OOF server system consist of, have allways wondered what has kept us all online over the years.  I know it has kept you busy at times doing updates etc.

i have visions in my head of what it looks like.

No, the hardware is proper server hardware, currently Proliants, linked via 10Gb switches. Although in line with everything else in the last 15 years, the actual servers that make up OOF are all virtualised...   ...apart from the first 3 weeks when it ran on Server Unlimited's shite shared hosting platform, OOF has always been virtual.

[TheBoy]

However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

Despite its exceptional stability, W2K Pro stopped getting updates in 2010.  So running it is brave


That said, I came across a W2K Server probably last year, maybe the year before, still processing logons merrily, and had been forgotten about.  It only got found when I was asked to look at why they were having trouble installing an application because the forest was incompatible, and we finally discovered this old beast acting as a DC

[LC0112G]

However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

Despite its exceptional stability, W2K Pro stopped getting updates in 2010.  So running it is brave

I know, but persuading our customer that replacing Win2K (and NT4) stuff because there may be security issues takes some doing. The customer?  MOD 

That said, many of the security issues appear to revolve around web browsers, java, scripts etc. Win2K doesn't support anything past IE6 so isn't prone to those exploits because it never supported any of it in the first place.

[TheBoy]

However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

Despite its exceptional stability, W2K Pro stopped getting updates in 2010.  So running it is brave

I know, but persuading our customer that replacing Win2K (and NT4) stuff because there may be security issues takes some doing. The customer?  MOD 

That said, many of the security issues appear to revolve around web browsers, java, scripts etc. Win2K doesn't support anything past IE6 so isn't prone to those exploits because it never supported any of it in the first place.

As soon as you mentioned NT4, I knew you were going to say one of the armed services .

The kernel has flaws, older versions of SMB are flawed, and there are loads of others.  So you rely entirely on perimeter defences....


...in Cov-ID terms, think of it as if you can keep it out of the country, you're fine. But once its here, it'll infect everything.