Does a daily reboot wear the flash memory faster?

[Vexira]

I was reading a few threads during my research that stated that rebooting a router daily would wear down the flash memory at a faster rate, I'm wondering if that is actually true or just an old wives tale.

 

[ColinTaylor]

No. Well, I guess you could argue that any reading or writing of flash memory "wears it out". But unless you're doing something unusual with your router rebooting it should have a negligible effect.

 

[Chiny91]

"Old wives' tale"... I've always liked that expression. It is commonly used to mean something is untrue but there is always that nagging feeling there may be a grain of truth in it. @ColinTaylor 's reply exactly encapsulates that feeling - neat.

 

[Vexira]

normal scheduled reboot to keep things running smooth, i guess in which case i should be all good, thank you @ColinTaylor

 

[Morris]

Don't worry, flash memory is rated for 100's of thousands of writes to each cell and they are rotated as written of avoid excess ware to individual cells. Asus routers don't last long enough for the flash memory to ware out. Other components will fail first and unfortunately sooner than we want.

Morris

 

[Tech9]

normal scheduled reboot to keep things running smooth

What happens if you don't reboot for a week/month? Do you have any bad experience with long uptime?

 

[L&LD]

I don't believe '100's of thousands of writes to each cell', is accurate. It may have been 15 years ago, but they don't build them like that today.

I'd be very surprised if each cell had much more than 10,000 writes, actually, at most.

 

[RMerlin]

I don't believe '100's of thousands of writes to each cell', is accurate. It may have been 15 years ago, but they don't build them like that today.

I'd be very surprised if each cell had much more than 10,000 writes, actually, at most.

The flash chip used by the RT-AX88U, for example, has a rated write endurance of 100K cycles.

https://www.macronix.com/Lists/Datasheet/Attachments/6858/MX30LF2G18AC,%203V,%202Gb,%20v1.4.pdf

There are different types of flash. Some are designed to handle storing logs, so they require higher endurance. This is the case here. It uses SLC, since unlike with an SSD, capacity or performance isn't the goal.

 

[pirx73]

Just being curious - why would anyone reboot their router daily? It's not Mikrotik after all

 

[L&LD]

I guess for these diminutive sizes, SLC is still actively used.

No, SLC isn't for capacity, it is for endurance (and it is (or was) faster than any multi-cell approach used commercially today).

Too bad Asus doesn't give it the proper (nand) controller to use that speed. But at least today's routers are much more responsive than earlier generation Asus' equipment.

 

[Poul Bak]

What happens if you don't reboot for a week/month? Do you have any bad experience with long uptime?

Read this, apparently nothing bad happens: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/the-uptime-contest.62711/

 

[sfx2000]

I guess for these diminutive sizes, SLC is still actively used.

No, SLC isn't for capacity, it is for endurance (and it is (or was) faster than any multi-cell approach used commercially today).

Don't assume it is SLC flash, you need to check the data sheet for the part itself.

No flash is ever wasted, every part of the wafer is used - one might want a 128 mbit part, but it could easily be a gigabit part that has enough bad cells to still meet needs for 128 mbit, just mark the bad parts, and over provision just enough - it's all abstracted out on the flash controller...

Remember what you write into flash is not what you get out - one gets a statistical representation of what was written.

Much like the voice bits you hear on your cell phone when talking with someone...

 

[RMerlin]

Don't assume it is SLC flash, you need to check the data sheet for the part itself.

It was specified in the datasheet that I linked.

 

[Tech9]

Read this, apparently nothing bad happens

Exactly, unless something is not right with hardware or configuration.