On May 23, 2016, at 8:41 AM, Wilfried Woeber <woeber@cc.univie.ac.at> wrote:

[...]
Has anyone tested how many writes are going on to the ATLAS thumb
drive?  Perhaps with all the failures within a year of start, perhaps
too many writes are taking place?

I know that a very small number of probes is not a valid basis for statistics,
but there wasn't a USB drive failure yet for the long-term, always-on probe.

But they are powered with dedicated, stable power sources.
Thus I tend to lean more towards the explanation involving level or stability
of power, rather than # of writes.

FWIW,
Wilfried

Regards,
Hank


Stable power, as from a UPS, also isolates the probe from power glitches which may cause rebooting of the probe, thus adding to the write count. Not to mention corruption from power failure during writes.

Opinion:  If the device/system/operation is at all important, use of a UPS is effectively mandatory.