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Samsung: it's virtually impossible to wear out a flash chip |
Listed in: Accessories, Opinions & Analysis Tags: psp accessories, Samsung Electronics
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Some concerns about flash drives circulated some time ago about how they wear out after a few hundred thousand write cycles. Those of us who use our flash drives often on our various gadgetries know that this isn't that huge of a number.
Because of these concerns, some have been led to believe that their flash drives weren't as reliable as they would have wanted, as they might wear out long before they expected it to. But this isn't the case, as Samsung points out.
Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung, explains that a flash device that is rated at 100,000 write cycles doesn't mean it wears out after as many uses. It means it can write 100,000 times "to every single (memory) cell within the device."
Essentially, the flash drive doesn't write memory on the same cell over and over again. Rather, it spreads out the data to be written over many different cells. This makes it "virtually impossible" to wear out a flash chip.
Yang gives an example: if you take a 64 GB SSD card, completely fill it with data, format it and then repeat the same thing over and over every hour for years on end, this still will not reach the card's threshold.
Yang adds that if a failure occurs, it will occur in the controller of the device, rather than the chip. The device's controller is the one that dictates "wear leveling," which spreads out the data over the flash drive.
When Yang was defending flash drives, he was talking specifically about solid-state drives (SSD), but perhaps the same principle could be applied to other devices to that use flash chips, like SD cards which we use for mobile phones and the PSP.
Via CNet Blogs
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Even old computer bios. lol
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Except you've missed the point. NES, SNES, N64, Sega, and BIOS' are read-only.
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lol just kidding
what Binary meant is that the SNES catridges (like zelda, phantasy star, final fantasy IV and super mario world) had flash chips to save your progress
and those are still working
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I don't mind when they cost £40 now (and god knows how few pennies in the future).
All my old GB and NES carts still save and function properly too. Course they don't get used as much as an SSD computer though.
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Like NBA Jam, when I power up my sega my high score from 15 years still there.
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And then what about the PSP? It's always pulling data off (especially for streaming data like music) the memory stick and they last a very long time. And aren't games also cached onto the memory stick for decreased loading time?
It's nothing to worry about. Evidently.
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So yes, it IS something to worry about.
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And techni - reading isn't going to wear out a NAND like a MS has, it's erase-write cycles (nand must be erased before it can be written) they talk about when discussing the 100,000 number.
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i guess it backfired, too much know what!
and most of the NES/SNES cartridges doesn't even have backup battery, these games uses passwords instead or just plain NO SAVING.
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"oh no scratch disks aren't written too" blah blah. Just as Samsung said - it isn't anything to worry about.
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