[asterisk-users] Flash IDE

[Ed W]

Juan Sandro wrote:
> Hi
>
> We have a number offices accommodating 4-6 people each hence it is very
> important for PBX to be fanless and silent. We have been looking at using
> IDE flash disks also called DOM. The performance tests we have done so far
> satisfy our requirements, however we are concerned with DOM durability.
>
> We have installed debian and vanilla asterisk on 1GB DOM. All seems to work
> fine at the moment however will DOM last? How long it will last? Is anyone
> able to share similar experience? Any other information/tips?
>   

I worried a lot about the same, in the end I went for a small laptop 
drive for "safety" (it's inaudible)

However, this came up on slashdot recently and if you search around the 
logic seems to be that:

- Flash rewrites quite a few times
- The good stuff has wear levelling so that most roughly speaking the 
whole thing should work until it suddenly all fails
- Given a big enough drive with a fair bit of free space then you should 
find it hard to wear it out in less than quite a few years even if you 
are hitting it quite hard (probably multiples of this).  Simply do the 
maths to get the rough life

So basically it seems that given a large enough flash drive with decent 
wear levelling the lifetime should be completely ample...

...Thats the theory anyway.

I feel quite bullish about the whole thing, but I think I would avoid 
the *really* discounted cheapo flash drives since they may not have the 
correct wear levelling.  Decent brand names should be fine though (and 
you can google for details on their specs)

Ed W