[GRLUG] swap benchmarking

[Tim Schmidt]

On 2/19/07, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> Doesn't flash have the limitation of a finite
> number of r/w cycles?  Some says it's in
> the millions,  but if used like a hard drive,
> this could lead to trouble.

Yes, flash has a theoretical write limit...  yes, it's in the millions
(billions?) and all modern flash has wear-leveling hardware built in
to spread writes evenly across all the flash cells.  Further, just
like modern disk drives, modern flash has plenty of spare flash cells
it can dynamically re-map into the device to replace bad cells.  You
should be able to swap constantly to any modern flash for years upon
years before seeing a bad block.

They're at least as reliable as hard drives at this point, if not more so.

--tim