FORTASA BLOG

Flash Card and SSD Endurance Measurement - Lifecycle Calculation and Estimate - Part 1

Every customer looking to integrate SSD or Flash Memory based storage system is keen on knowing the useful life he can expect from the chosen storage product. The worst thing that could happen is that the Flash drive reaches the functional end of life and stops working frustrating the user and mandating an expensive service call.

SSD Reached Its Endurance Limit

Endurance, or how many program/erase cycles the Flash device can handle over the product lifetime, is a key metric that determines the effective service life of a Flash device and defines the amount of written data that it can can sustain before reaching the end of its rated life. In SSDs or Flash cards there is NOT a one-to-one relationship between the number of host writes and the actual physical program/erase cycles performed to the NAND Flash media. Due to the nature of Flash Controller data management algorithm, not all NAND blocks  reach their end of life simultaneously.

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Flash Card and SSD Endurance Measurement - Lifecycle Calculation and Estimate - Part 1

Every customer looking to integrate SSD or Flash Memory based storage system is keen on knowing the useful life he can expect from the chosen storage product. The worst thing that could happen is that the Flash drive reaches the functional end of life and stops working frustrating the user and mandating an expensive service call.

SSD Reached Its Endurance Limit

Endurance, or how many program/erase cycles the Flash device can handle over the product lifetime, is a key metric that determines the effective service life of a Flash device and defines the amount of written data that it can can sustain before reaching the end of its rated life. In SSDs or Flash cards there is NOT a one-to-one relationship between the number of host writes and the actual physical program/erase cycles performed to the NAND Flash media. Due to the nature of Flash Controller data management algorithm, not all NAND blocks  reach their end of life simultaneously.

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SSD MTBF Rating - Meaningless in Flash Drive Reliability Estimate

Many Flash Drive manufacturers provide a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rating as an estimate of an SSD life expectancy. Typically this rating is >2,000,000 hours for an SLC (Single Level Cell) NAND based SSD or >1,000,000 hours for an MLC (Multi-Level Cell) based SSD. While at a first glance 1 Million hours (114 years) of life expectancy seems like a huge overkill for a typical application, in reality an MTBF number is not representative of the realistic expected usage of the Flash SSD.

MTBF is a theoretical formula based on the sum of the Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) rates of the individual components used in a specific SSD design.

Formula to calculate MTBF for a Flash SSD, Card or Module

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SSD MTBF Rating - Meaningless in Flash Drive Reliability Estimate

Many Flash Drive manufacturers provide a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rating as an estimate of an SSD life expectancy. Typically this rating is >2,000,000 hours for an SLC (Single Level Cell) NAND based SSD or >1,000,000 hours for an MLC (Multi-Level Cell) based SSD. While at a first glance 1 Million hours (114 years) of life expectancy seems like a huge overkill for a typical application, in reality an MTBF number is not representative of the realistic expected usage of the Flash SSD.

MTBF is a theoretical formula based on the sum of the Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) rates of the individual components used in a specific SSD design.

Formula to calculate MTBF for a Flash SSD, Card or Module

READ MORE