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Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

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Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#121

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

gumboza wrote: post #111
vibrolax wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. I would be running my 440BX today, but all the motherboards died from bad electrolytic capacitors that were endemic in that era.

Nothing you can't fix with Mouser and a soldering iron :)

It's not even that complicated with hardware of that era.

Let's say you are afraid to destroy the through holes of the multilayer PCB by de-soldering the broken parts, or heating bordering parts up too much, whatever.

In most cases you can pull the caps just off from their pins, clean the pins, (even with paper tissue only) and simply solder the new ones to the old pins still anchored in the board.

Looks weird, but works :-)

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#122

Post by Filligree »

deckard1 wrote: post #109
Filligree wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't, that's the thing, right? I have a Ryzen desktop with ECC, and it registers about one bit-flip per week. I don't know how many of those would become crashes, but I'm more worried about the ones that wouldn't.

> Ryzen desktop with ECC, and it registers about one bit-flip per week. yeah, you have bad ram. Or you overclocked it. I have a Ryzen server with 32GB ECC RAM running 24/7 for a year. 0 bit flips. Not a single one.

I did overclock it. It's a 3200 MHz module running at 3600; pretty typical for a gaming machine.

Of course, overclocked or not, I don't get memory errors. Just the occasional EDAC event.

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#123

Post by akerl_ »

moloch-hai wrote: post #117
gruez wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That we cannot get laptops or even desk machines with ECC, and so have them crash frequently, is seen as a trivial side effect of the strategy I’m not sure what you mean by “frequently”, but my non-ECC machines definitely do not crash “frequently”. > before MS, a program crashing was grounds for a refund Source?

Frequently, for me, means at all. Computers are designed as deterministic state machines. Any unintended indeterminism is a failure. Microsoft, uniquely exercising monopoly power, was able to institute a "no refunds, nohow" policy and make it stick: Windows95 machines commonly crashed several times a day, enough so that "crash" came to mean, instead, you have to reinstall the OS, which happened at least one per sever…

I guess you can use the term however you want, but FWIW if you say "frequently" and mean "at all", it makes it a lot harder to understand the point you're trying to make.

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#124

Post by justsomehnguy »

dmitrybrant wrote: post #75
justsomehnguy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And condoms are only 99.8% effective, so let's not use it? You can always pull out in time or verify checksu^W^W Plan B? > But really most of all I live in a world of Git repositories That's great for you , but 99% don't even know what Git is, just like checksums, cryptographic hashes, Merkle trees, digital signatures and reproducible builds . You just miss the one imortant thing: ECC isn't that helpful where you hav…

Hang on... to go from "System32" to "System33" is one bit flip, but to go from "System33" to "System34" is three bit flips at once. Doesn't that seem astronomically more likely to be a malicious program than bad RAM?

It's astronomically more likely to be a manufacturing defect what affected multiple cells than a malicious program what ... wrote to System34? And how the replacement of the DRAM module 'cured' that malicious program?

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#125

Post by wil421 »

layer8 wrote: post #89
metadat wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a 6 disk Synology a few months ago and it came with ECC by default. I did a cursory web search about this just now and ECC support appears to be the norm for 22 (as in the year 2022) model revisions and newer (thankfully!).

It’s because they use AMD CPUs now (already in the 21 models). The trade-off is that those CPUs have worse hardware codec support than the Intel ones they previously used, if you want to do video transcoding.

Intel sold i3s for years that had ECC unlocked. I run a i3-8100 on an x11 mobo in my TrueNAS box.

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#126

Post by wil421 »

lizardactivist wrote: post #57

I'm curious what the actual manufacturing costs for ECC DRAM is compared to regular DRAM. Is it considerably more expensive, or just the usual over-charge because it's better?

It has another error correcting chip on DIMM, 9 total instead of 8. Don’t be fooled by on-die ecc marketing that’s come out recently, you need the 9th chip for parity.

https://community.fs.com/blog/ecc-vs-non-ecc-memory-which-on...

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#127

Post by moloch-hai »

akerl_ wrote: post #123
moloch-hai wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frequently, for me, means at all. Computers are designed as deterministic state machines. Any unintended indeterminism is a failure. Microsoft, uniquely exercising monopoly power, was able to institute a "no refunds, nohow" policy and make it stick: Windows95 machines commonly crashed several times a day, enough so that "crash" came to mean, instead, you have to reinstall the OS, which happened at least one per sever…

I guess you can use the term however you want, but FWIW if you say "frequently" and mean "at all", it makes it a lot harder to understand the point you're trying to make.

If it happens to me, it is happening to untold others, too. Thus, frequently.

"Infrequently" would mean I had not heard of it, or that I heard only of isolated instances, well publicized.

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#128

Post by KennyBlanken »

helf wrote: post #92
moloch-hai wrote: post #9

We don't have ECC mainly because Intel has long been hostile to "consumer" access to ECC. Apparently this was conceived as a market segmentation scheme: people outfitting servers could get ECC when they pay a huge premium. They would thereby not be tempted to cheap out and buy consumer-grade equipment, otherwise wholly adequate to meet all their needs at a radically cheaper price. That we cannot get laptops or even d…

I see this a lot but I really don’t think it was/is that simplistic. It’s added complexity and cost for something that rarely would benefit most consumers. Now, you can argue that the complexity and cost is a nonissue on modern setups and I would probably agree. But Intel has long had desktop grade hardware with ECC support. The 440GX chipset supported ECC and I ran a Dell GX1 SFF with 768MB of ECC PC100 for yeeeears…

Just because the chipset supported it doesn't mean the motherboard did, and there's little incentive for a motherboard company that makes server boards (OEM or under their own brand, or both) to sell ECC motherboards for the desktop consumer market, and integrators will not want to harm their "workstation" sales if "SOHO" systems are capable of ECC.

BTW, AMD's Ryzen CPUs and "Pro" APUs (APU = cpu with integrated graphics) will all do ECC, but not "officially", and not all motherboards have BIOS that supports it. You need to google around or just try it.

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#129

Post by akerl_ »

moloch-hai wrote: post #127
akerl_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you can use the term however you want, but FWIW if you say "frequently" and mean "at all", it makes it a lot harder to understand the point you're trying to make.

If it happens to me, it is happening to untold others, too. Thus, frequently. "Infrequently" would mean I had not heard of it, or that I heard only of isolated instances, well publicized.

I feel like I just fell into a bucket of logical fallacies.

Re: Non-ECC memory corrupted my hard drive image [video]

#130

Post by jquery »

moloch-hai wrote: post #9

We don't have ECC mainly because Intel has long been hostile to "consumer" access to ECC. Apparently this was conceived as a market segmentation scheme: people outfitting servers could get ECC when they pay a huge premium. They would thereby not be tempted to cheap out and buy consumer-grade equipment, otherwise wholly adequate to meet all their needs at a radically cheaper price. That we cannot get laptops or even d…

My current PC has ECC memory and I will never go back to non-ECC memory. The stability increase is noticeable, especially when using RAM as a cache drive.
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