Concerns over Flash Storage?

Channels Apple TV
#1

Let me preface by saying I absolutely love this app, I rave about it to everyone who will listen.
Was recently poking around reddit and found this thread about a review from a year or so ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/comments/45xbmu/channels_review_pair_it_with_a_hdhomerun_for_tv/

This comment stuck out to me:

'sounds like a great way to trash the internal flash storage with all the constant writing and erasing for hours at a time every day.

I’m not talking about an immediate effect that you would notice in the short amount of time the Apple TV 4th gen has been out. It’s more of a long term effect. It’s like taking a regular car and using it as a taxi in New York City, driving around start-stop 24/7, going over potholes and in use rain, snow or shine. Versus taking the same car, drive it to work, park it for 8 hours, drive it back and park it overnight in your garage. You think there is going to be a difference in the wear and tear and longevity of the car?
I’m an Apple fan, but I don’t think their app review process takes into account thinking about such things. What the app is doing is within the bounds of the app store rules. It requests storage space and it uses it. What I’m saying is, there’s going to be consequences from the way it is using it.
_And, what it sounds like to me, honest, is that you’re defending something you have no idea about. I started out my career at a major flash memory company working to push flash memory chips to beyond their limits by erasing them over and over and see what happened to their reliability. Then worked for another major semiconductor company’s flash division for years in the hardware group and then in the flash software group where we tried to find ways to minimize flash memory wear when used by applications such as these. So, yeah, I might have some idea about this stuff.

Was just wondering if this fear is unfounded or if there is some validity to it.

#2

I’m no expert on Flash storage, so I can’t really say how valid this is. We did speak with some Apple engineers when the app first launched and they seemed to be fine with the way we were using the internal storage.

My understanding is that modern flash devices are designed for heavy read/write i/o, and use “wear-leveling” techniques to ensure writes are spread out evenly across the underlying sectors. They are also usually rated for 100,000+ write-erase cycles which should last years under even the most heavy use.

#3

It’s unfounded. You could run Channels 24/7 and the flash storage wouldn’t die for about 10 years.

#4

I’m sure that more use will decrease the life of the drive, regardless of what kind of drive it is. But hard drives are meant to be used. Use it the way that you intend.

All hard drives are kind of consumable items. No storage system will last forever. This is why so many backup solutions exist. and why RAID was developed. Have a backup for your important data and replace your drives with new ones if/when they fail.

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#5

Yup. but RAID is NOT a replacement for backups. It MAY slow down the possibility of critical data loss by hopefully giving a chance to replace a bad drive or backup essential data. I have seen too many scenarios where a bad drive was not noticed in time or a misconfigured RAID system failed and disaster happened. Even worse is when the backups are not regularly verified.