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But if I open up an editor and write a document then that could be corrupted in RAM and then the corrupted data saved to disk. The document is likely to be mor

by rwmj 4y ago

But if I open up an editor and write a document then that could be corrupted in RAM and then the corrupted data saved to disk. The document is likely to be more important than some ripped CDs or a git repo that I can download again. The CPU, RAM and mobo manufacturers need to get together and make ECC RAM mandatory. It's absurd that we have machines with gigabytes of storage using microscopic (nanoscopic??) capacitors that doesn't have this basic protection. And honestly this should have happened years ago. (Edit: And before anyone says DDR5 is ECC by default, that's not quite true although the difference is a bit subtle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM#DIMMs_versus_memory_chips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM#DIMMs_versus_memory...)

ilyt 4y ago
>But if I open up an editor and write a document then that could be corrupted in RAM and then the corrupted data saved to disk. The document is likely to be more important than some ripped CDs or a git repo that I can download again. Devils advocate: if it is just some bits in character flipped it's entirely recoverable while flipping some bits in compressed stream for video would corrupt more.
- rwmj 4y ago
  Agreed. One problem with RAM errors (which I've actually experienced) is they are insidious. You probably won't notice them immediately so the error can be propagated, and they're very very difficult to diagnose if you do notice them. Back in the 90s we had a database server which had a stuck bit in memory normally mapped to the page cache. This caused sectors to be written to the backing software RAID which couldn't be read back in (because I think some checksum was corrupted when written and then failed when read back). It took an absolute age to diagnose this. I think I only worked it out by eliminating everything else.

by rwmj 4y ago

ilyt 4y ago

>But if I open up an editor and write a document then that could be corrupted in RAM and then the corrupted data saved to disk. The document is likely to be more important than some ripped CDs or a git repo that I can download again. Devils advocate: if it is just some bits in character flipped it's entirely recoverable while flipping some bits in compressed stream for video would corrupt more.

rwmj 4y ago
Agreed. One problem with RAM errors (which I've actually experienced) is they are insidious. You probably won't notice them immediately so the error can be propagated, and they're very very difficult to diagnose if you do notice them. Back in the 90s we had a database server which had a stuck bit in memory normally mapped to the page cache. This caused sectors to be written to the backing software RAID which couldn't be read back in (because I think some checksum was corrupted when written and then failed when read back). It took an absolute age to diagnose this. I think I only worked it out by eliminating everything else.