Hi,

 

I am totally new to linux and unRiad, but have been runing unRiad successfully for two weeks. It's a beauty!!! And my

wife's experience with HTPC has improved tremendously.

 

I am doing as much reading as I can to educate myself and I stumbled upon something that caught my attention.

In short, it's about the finite number of writes that a flash drive can take. I read it's 100,000. I also read that Win XP

using NTFS does two writes every second, so one running Win XP with NTFS from a flash drive would see his drive pass away after about 8 hours.

 

So, my question is how often is the flash drive written to under the unRiad system? I guess my concern is about the longevity of the

flash drive I am using. If the number of writes is minimal and the theoretical life expectancy of the flash (barring other issues) is 50 years, then it's OK.

If, on the other hand, the life expectancy is 2-3 years then I would like to be prepared for that and have a clear mitigation strategy for that.

 

Thank you for your responces in advance.

In short, it's about the finite number of writes that a flash drive can take. I read it's 100,000. I also read that Win XP

using NTFS does two writes every second, so one running Win XP with NTFS from a flash drive would see his drive pass away after about 8 hours.

 

I can't speak for unRAID but if this is true then my flash drive should have died months ago.  I've left my drive connected to a computer on 24/7 for days at a time, the longest period being around 10 days.  Not to mention it's an 8GB drive and I've filled and emptied it more times than I can remember.  If you buy a quality drive I wouldn't worry about it, you'll probably break or replace it before it goes bad.

In short, it's about the finite number of writes that a flash drive can take. I read it's 100,000. I also read that Win XP

using NTFS does two writes every second, so one running Win XP with NTFS from a flash drive would see his drive pass away after about 8 hours.

 

I can't speak for unRAID but if this is true then my flash drive should have died months ago.  I've left my drive connected to a computer on 24/7 for days at a time, the longest period being around 10 days.  Not to mention it's an 8GB drive and I've filled and emptied it more times than I can remember.  If you buy a quality drive I wouldn't worry about it, you'll probably break or replace it before it goes bad.

 

Let me clarify: not using a flash drive as a mass storage device (as I understand you refer to), but runing an OS (e.g. Win XP) from the flash drive... That's where two writes per second happen...

unRaid writes to the flash drive when you change the configuration and also when you start or stop the array.

 

Other than that, it is read-only.  The OS is read from the flash drive into RAM and run from there. 

 

You will be fine.  The flash drive should last almost forever.

 

Joe L.