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Flash Destroyer Tests Limit of Solid State Storage

Posted by timothy on from the step-right-up-place-your-bets dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We all know that flash and other types of solid state storage can only endure a limited number of write cycles. The open source Flash Destroyer prototype explores that limit by writing and verifying a solid state storage chip until it dies. The total write-verify cycle count is shown on a display — watch a live video feed and guess when the first chip will die. This project was inspired by the inevitable comments about flash longevity on every Slashdot SSD story. Design files and source are available at Google Code."

10 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. live stream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    a live stream linked on slashdot.. ouch..

  2. Subject here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Flash! Aa-aaahhh!!

    1. Re:Subject here by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

      Now do that a million more times and we'll see if you wear out. Don't forget to include the live video feed.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  3. Die Flash, DIE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wait, which flash are we talking about here?

  4. dull by Threni · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was expecting something cool, like storing a picture, displaying it, and then constantly XORing each pixel with some random number twice, repeatedly, and watching the image decay over time. Although it would appear that it'd need quite a lot of time.

  5. Myth Busters by PSaltyDS · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now, to see how much explosives it takes to MAKE it fail!

    This is my favorite part! :-)

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
  6. Re:Interesting! by D+Ninja · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you have any important data on that drive, urine trouble...

  7. I know by billlava · · Score: 5, Funny

    They could add an extra digit to the front of the display showing how many times the other numbers have reached their maximum! Brilliant, 10x the capacity for only one digit more!

  8. Re:Interesting! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

    A SSD with flash that averages 1,000,000 writes before blocks start to fail but does it gracefully with little/no data loss could be better than one that averages 2,000,000 but goes out in a blaze of glory as soon as the first block fails.

    That depends on how you define "better", and for my personal definition, it depends on exactly how glorious a blaze it is. :)

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  9. Re:Interesting! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 4, Funny

    That brings to mind an old favorite of mine: the Light Emitting EPROM. The power pins on EPROM chips are in opposite corners. Plug in the EPROM chip backwards and you've hooked the power up backwards. Result: A light emitting EPROM, though one with a very limited service life.