[mythtv-users] Compact Flash write cycles (was: Re: Intro---)

David Brodbeck gull at gull.us
Wed Jan 2 17:28:03 UTC 2008


On Jan 2, 2008, at 7:43 AM, David George wrote:
> This is true.  Early flash was 100,000 writes.  Current NAND flash is
> typically 1,000,000 writes.  However this is writes to a sector
> (smallest writable unit).  The other catch is you will really want to
> use a filesystem designed specifically for wear-leveling like YAFFS.
> With 1,000,000 writes, if you write to the same sector once per  
> second,
> you get about twelve days worth of writes.

I'm pretty certain CompactFlash cards have wear-leveling built in.   
They're designed to be used with FAT filesystems in things like  
cameras.  FAT would be pretty terrible without wear-leveling -- the  
file allocation tables are always in the same place and have to be  
updated after every write.

In a previous job I dealt with industrial touchscreen computers  
running Windows 95 off 64 megabyte CompactFlash cards.  Card failures  
were quite rare even after years of service.


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list