Potential problems with the minibook storage drive?

[alsaf]

The minibook I have uses a 2GB Nand Flash drive which I believe it's use, the same as a hard disk drive on PC/Laptops, is called a Solid-State Drive.

I read in a magazine there is a problem with Flash drives that they can only be written to a number of time before it starts to corrupts. This is confirmed on the wiki article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

From what I gather, this problem only occurs if data is constantly written to the same sector ( area of flash drive).

Do anyone know if this issue will affect the minibook? 

[jon_Onet]

It is true that the drives will wear out eventually, but so do hard disks.

Most flash drives spread the load so that they do not write to the same part every time, this prolongs the life of the drive.

With this device there is no swap drive which would result in many writes to the flash so the number of writes will actually be quite low and the drive should therefore last for a pretty long time.

[alsaf]

Hard drives is that they can be easily replaced whereas the flash drive in the minibook can't, I think, which is what worried me.

The wiki article mentioned what you said, called war levelling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_levelling

I'm sure as you say, the SSD on the minibook will last a long time.

 

[bonnie]

Hello - just wondering if the Elonex has wear levelling.  How can you find out and how can you deal with it if not.  I always like to have something new to worry about!

[Mijzelf]

Yes it has. The flash memory is formatted in yaffs, which is designed to take care of this.

[bonnie]

Thanks for that - I've now read up on yaffs - always something new to learn.