To ECC or not to ECC, that is the question

[DivideBy0]

I am building a new UnRaid based on the on the Raptor Lake CPU and I have a mobo that supports ECC or non-ECC memory.  Which one should I get and is there a benefit to ECC memory over non ECC?  Obviously the ECC is almost double in price if I go that route. Is it worth the extra $$$ ? 

[Geck0]

ECC post

Hey /0,

Check this post, it may be the answer to your query, I seemed to recall seeing this not too long ago.

[Frank1940]

38 minutes ago, DivideBy0 said:

Is it worth the extra $$$ ? 

 

It depends on how paranoid you are about data loss from any possible cause.  (A random high energy photon could swap a data bit in RAM...) 

 

But remember, there are more ways to lose data than a simple file corruption.  Think about fires, floods, Lightening, malware, theft of hardware, etc.  You should make sure that multiple backups of any irreplaceable data with some of these backups off-site. 

[DivideBy0]

Thanks gents.  I am paranoid but I have backups. 

The question is do we really know when corruption happens due to non-ECC ram?  Because if data is corrupted you will copy corrupted data to your backups, right? 

I do file integrity checks but I want to be 1000% I am not copying corrupted data to cloud. 

[JonathanM]

1 minute ago, DivideBy0 said:

do we really know when corruption happens due to non-ECC ram?

Sometimes. The good thing is Unraid OS runs in RAM, so any errors tend to be show stoppers, causing crashes instead of lurking in the background. The problem is that RAM errors are impossible to predict, so there is a non-zero chance that a RAM error could corrupt data without overt symptoms.

[itimpi]

45 minutes ago, DivideBy0 said:

The question is do w

If you use btrfs or ZFS file systems then the corruption should be detected before you copy anything to backups as they have built in checksumming.

[DivideBy0]

Thanks guys