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SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

cisco.com

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Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#3
Cisco is not a SSD manufacturer. They write industry-wide bug. Does that mean that more than one SSD manufacturer is affected (because they use partially the same firmware)? Further down they mention only Sandisk. Or is the industry-wide just their newspeak for saying any Sandisk of affected model, regardless whether installed in a Cisco box or somewhere else?

Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#4
40000 (or even 40960) seems an odd number to fail at. 64k or 32k would make the cause pretty obvious, but 40000 doesn't seem all that round in binary. Perhaps a 12-bit counter incrementing every 10h? This is puzzling.

Of course, I am also entertaining the possibility that no one thought they would be in use for this long, which would certainly be evidence of planned obsolescence.

Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#5

40000 (or even 40960) seems an odd number to fail at. 64k or 32k would make the cause pretty obvious, but 40000 doesn't seem all that round in binary. Perhaps a 12-bit counter incrementing every 10h? This is puzzling. Of course, I am also entertaining the possibility that no one thought they would be in use for this long, which would certainly be evidence of planned obsolescence.

Very strange understanding of the word "evidence".

No sane SSD manufacturer would do such thing on purpose. You do it and you loose business, that's it.

The simplest explanation is that somebody made an honest engineering mistake.

Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#6

40000 (or even 40960) seems an odd number to fail at. 64k or 32k would make the cause pretty obvious, but 40000 doesn't seem all that round in binary. Perhaps a 12-bit counter incrementing every 10h? This is puzzling. Of course, I am also entertaining the possibility that no one thought they would be in use for this long, which would certainly be evidence of planned obsolescence.

Someone pointed out on the other thread that it could be 2^57 nanoseconds:

  >>> 2**57/10**9/3600
  40031.996687737745

Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#7

Possibly related to recent HN issues, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32031243

Wow, thanks for sharing. I didn't realize how closely related they were.

(TLDR For anyone wondering, "recent HN issues" means HN very likely went down yesterday because of this same bug, when two (edit: two pairs, four total) enterprise SSDs with old firmware died after 40,000 hours close together. An admin of HN and its host both like this theory. See details in that thread.)

Edit: If you want to discuss that theory, it's probably better to do it in that other thread directly instead... dang and a person from M5 Hosting (HN's previous host) are both participating there.

Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#8

40000 (or even 40960) seems an odd number to fail at. 64k or 32k would make the cause pretty obvious, but 40000 doesn't seem all that round in binary. Perhaps a 12-bit counter incrementing every 10h? This is puzzling. Of course, I am also entertaining the possibility that no one thought they would be in use for this long, which would certainly be evidence of planned obsolescence.

Someone pointed out on the other thread that it could be 2^57 nanoseconds: >>> 2**57/10**9/3600 40031.996687737745

If it were 53, I'd wonder "are they storing the time in the integer part of a double precision float?" That wouldn't go negative, it'd just start absorbing increments without changing the value.

Though that might cause a divide by zero?

What could cause unexpected behavior at 57 bits?

Perhaps storing fractions of an hour, like incrementing it every 1/16th of an hour and calculating a relative rate of change, causing a divide by zero?

Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#9
post #7

Possibly related to recent HN issues, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32031243

Wow, thanks for sharing. I didn't realize how closely related they were. (TLDR For anyone wondering, "recent HN issues" means HN very likely went down yesterday because of this same bug, when two (edit: two pairs, four total) enterprise SSDs with old firmware died after 40,000 hours close together. An admin of HN and its host both like this theory. See details in that thread.) Edit: If you want to discuss that theory…

the chance of two SSD's failing at the same time under normal circumstances is extremely slim. So this might actually be a good cause of this incident.

Re: SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)

#10
post #5

40000 (or even 40960) seems an odd number to fail at. 64k or 32k would make the cause pretty obvious, but 40000 doesn't seem all that round in binary. Perhaps a 12-bit counter incrementing every 10h? This is puzzling. Of course, I am also entertaining the possibility that no one thought they would be in use for this long, which would certainly be evidence of planned obsolescence.

Very strange understanding of the word "evidence". No sane SSD manufacturer would do such thing on purpose. You do it and you loose business, that's it. The simplest explanation is that somebody made an honest engineering mistake.

Given the power dynamic between a single customer and large corporations, the smart thing to do is to assume malice until prove otherwise. This puts the onus on the corporations and, if we're lucky, creates an environment where they compete with each other to be seen as the most honest. The worst thing that happens is the single customer has to buy an SSD from someone they don't trust.

If we do the opposite, as you say, and assume everything is an honest mistake, that puts pressure on the single customer to prove that the organization with a huge marketing budget is doing something wrong. In this situation, the worst thing that happens is we all get taken advantage of.

Our collective distrust is the only power we have against massive marketing/PR budgets. It doesn't have to be angry, or sour, or cranky, we just collectively need to not take their word until we have a reason to do so.

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