[NTLK] flash longevity question

[Dan]

On 9/15/2022 5:13 PM, Victor Rehorst wrote:

> Longevity is relative, and let's face it: the vast majority of consumer electronics are made to be disposable, not durable.  When it comes to NAND vs NOR, they have different use cases in computing.  NOR flash is meant to be a flexible replacement for mask ROM; both are byte-addressable, which means code can be executed directly from it, instead of being copied to RAM first. NAND flash is a replacement for hard disks: large capacity, and block-addressable.
> 
> In terms of preservation, best practices for flash memory seem to boil down to:
> 
> 1. Keep program/erase cycles as low as possible.
> 2. Don't store at extremely hot temperatures.
> 3. Power on every now and then, to refresh the charge in the flash.
> 
> -V
You have a point.  Sad though, as while most electronics are made to be disposable, having your data stored reliably should be a higher priority.  And with various tech that is designed to monitor say hard drives/storage and their status to predict (possibly, nothing is 100%) a failure might occur, you would think things were moving in the right direction.  Not the opposite one.

And the first two are almost assumed.  But with regard to 3, the question is how often.  But that depends I am sure on the chips in question.

-Dan