3 ms·
I've never had ECC memory to my knowledge. What have I been missing out on, in practice? Can we confidently say that x% of my past BSOD were the direct conseque
by laweijfmvo 4y ago
I've never had ECC memory to my knowledge. What have I been missing out on, in practice? Can we confidently say that x% of my past BSOD were the direct consequence?
- TacticalCoder 4y ago> I've never had ECC memory to my knowledge. What have I been missing out on, in practice? Can we confidently say that x% of my past BSOD were the direct consequence? I very highly doubt so. I remember BSOD and Guru meditations (on the Amiga) before that. Once I switched to Linux suddenly no more BSOD and very little kernel panics. I've had at times my desktop reach six months of uptime. I think bit-flips are a great excuse for unreliable software. BTW I'm not saying ECC is unnecessary: I'm saying it's unlikely the lack of ECC was the reason for most of the BSOD you saw throughout the ages.
- indolering 4y agoThe bitflip would also have to cause an error in logic that would result in a system lockup. That's unlikely, given that most information flowing through ram is probably data, not logic.
- derkades 4y agoYou may have been lucky enough to never experienced a bad module. But when it does happen, it can have major consequences (losing data, having to reinstall an OS). All while being totally preventable.
- kiririn 4y agoNot enough people realise that the driving reason for ECC in home systems is this, not random once-in-a-blue-moon bit flips I’ll always buy ECC after multiple data loss events from ram suddenly going bad, worth every penny to have ECC ring alarm bells rather than put 2+2 together after random BSODs and silent corruption