Flashing Limit - Touch Diamond, MDA Compact IV ROM Development

Does anybody know if there is a limit in the number of times that the phone can be flashed? I remember reading a long time ago that flash chips have a limited lifespan.

arisg said:
Does anybody know if there is a limit in the number of times that the phone can be flashed? I remember reading a long time ago that flash chips have a limited lifespan.
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I can confirm... after aprox. 250 flashings my trinity still can be flashed...
I have read, this number can be 1.000, but donĀ“t take it as a fixed number of opportunities... maybe you can always FLASH again... there are a very huge number of times you can flash.

Related

Am I damaging my phone

Hello all,
Firstly thanks to all who create these great roms...
Secondly I have my flashed my phone more times than I can remember
my question is am I doing any damage to the device buy doing this....?
Nelkz said:
Hello all,
Firstly thanks to all who create these great roms...
Secondly I have my flashed my phone more times than I can remember
my question is am I doing any damage to the device buy doing this....?
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the eprom on the device has a life, like all in the world...
I think it can support around 10.000 flashes, so be happy, don't warry!!
ervius said:
I think it can support around 10.000 flashes, so be happy, don't warry!!
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Well... that depends. Nelkz said that he has flashed his phone more times than he can remember. Assume he has a photographical memory and he could recall till 10.001 previous flashes, that would mean he would have crossed the 10.000 flashlimit.
the flash storage also have a limited number of writes before it too dies
so passing these phones on to kids and grankids is prob out of the question
and the storage will die long before the flash with the rom in it
Rudegar said:
the flash storage also have a limited number of writes before it too dies
so passing these phones on to kids and grankids is prob out of the question
and the storage will die long before the flash with the rom in it
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In 16 years my kids will probably laugh their pants of if I wanted to pass this (then prehistorical) device on to them.
Consider this: even under minimal use, like when you save a document and even dial a number, there would be something written to the device's flash rom.
The OS part is usually not being written at all except when you are really flashing it.
I think the OS flash rom can survive longer than the part of rom that make up your program storage, in theory.
Of course, in practice the flashes nowadays have mechanism to mark bad block, and even wear levelling in place.

What is the affect of repeated hard resets on our devices?

First off, I'd just like to mention that I have searched and gone through all 20 pages of results so before anyone shouts at me because the my question has been asked I did try
Secondly: If this is in the wrong place I apologise.
So my question:
Are our devices adversely affected by hard resets? If so are things compounded by repeated hard resets?
The reason I ask is I have been experiencing some odd behaviour with my new Touch Pro and I've hard reset it quite a few times. I dont want to keep going if it's suddenly going to end up bricking my ROM.
Now it's my understanding (from a semi-educated angle) that a hard reset erases a memory area of the device (the ROM, I'm assuming this is some kind of EEPROM) and restores it with information stored in a different area of memory (also EEPROM).
I know that flash memory has limited number of read/write cycles but these days that figure is up in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. But is there anything else that might be cause for concern when carrying out repeated hard resets (which erase and rewrite areas of EEPROM?
Any input much appreciated.
Kind Regards.
Syphon
Believe it or not, there aren't many affects on the device (negative ones that is). I've flashed my Tilt because of testing ROMs so many times and i'm pretty sure somebody has flashed more than me.
Wow ok...you reckon you could just indefinitely keep flashing and hard resetting without issue (assuming you don't hit the upper read/write limits)?
Syphon Filter said:
Wow ok...you reckon you could just indefinitely keep flashing and hard resetting without issue (assuming you don't hit the upper read/write limits)?
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Certainly; if you follow flashing procedures each time, you should be good to go .
For chefs like me who has been cooking countless versions of rom, I can tell u repeated and deliberate hard resets and re-flashing does not affect the phone itself.
I have lost count how many time I did this with my i780, probably close to 400 times because debugging a rom is a very tedious process, not to mention how many times I semi-bricked the poor thing
Well this is good to know, any other opinions on the matter would be much appreciated.
Thanks for the input so far guys.
ahh always been paranoid about it effecting the write/read limits.
good to know.
chrismrulz said:
ahh always been paranoid about it effecting the write/read limits.
good to know.
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Yeah, I didnt think there would be an issue but with these things you never know. I completely understand about read/write cycle limits but as i say in modern devices these are well up in the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands and I would expect that is true of our WinMo handhelds.
I felt a bit stupid asking, but if you dont ask you will never know right!

[Q] A Glitch Appearing 2 Months After the Last Flash? Seriously?

Has anyone of you ever experienced this?
After letting the phone go on standby, all suddenly when I get back at it it starts asking again for PIN Code and says that the SIM is locked. Then after a few SMS, I put the phone in standby again. After about 30 minutes, it happened again. This happened around 4 times I guess. Additionally, when opening-closing the slider after about 5 times consecutively (because I was testing the sliders if the two parts scratch each other), the phone just restarts on its own.
Carrier signal is very strong in my area. I have not made any tweaks besides root. No custom ROMS, on stock .42 last flashed December 1 of last year.
No more no less.
So what's wrong with my phone?
122 views and no reply.. jeez
narflynn619 said:
122 views and no reply.. jeez
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Maybe you should bite the bullet and try a clean flash.
Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk

[Q] Is it possible to flash too much?

So I finally bricked yesterday (thank god for Sprint's insurance program) and I started thinking, is there such a thing as flashing too much?
It wasn't during the actual flash itself, my phone was just sitting on the charger, and suddenly, my phone wouldn't power on anymore. I think maybe the motherboard is fried. It's been a particularly flash heavy week for me (I've been messing around with a number of different ICS builds, maybe one every other day) so I got to thinking, is there such a thing as flashing too much? I'm no electrical engineer, but logic tells me that all the constant reboots and power up/downs required for flashing can't be good for the hardware if excessive
So the question remains, do you guys think there is an appropriate number of times a phone should be flashed in a certain time period?
elterible said:
So I finally bricked yesterday (thank god for Sprint's insurance program) and I started thinking, is there such a thing as flashing too much?
It wasn't during the actual flash itself, my phone was just sitting on the charger, and suddenly, my phone wouldn't power on anymore. I think maybe the motherboard is fried. It's been a particularly flash heavy week for me (I've been messing around with a number of different ICS builds, maybe one every other day) so I got to thinking, is there such a thing as flashing too much? I'm no electrical engineer, but logic tells me that all the constant reboots and power up/downs required for flashing can't be good for the hardware if excessive
So the question remains, do you guys think there is an appropriate number of times a phone should be flashed in a certain time period?
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LOL you are not seriously asking flash-a-holics if there is a limit... Does and alcoholic ever think he has had one too many...
*Flash or Bust*
Well, yeah. If you flash people too much, you'll eventually get arrested. That's sick.
Well on my thunderbolt I flashed a recovery about 12 times without rebooting once.... ;P
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2
playya said:
LOL you are not seriously asking flash-a-holics if there is a limit... Does and alcoholic ever think he has had one too many...
*Flash or Bust*
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LOL, yeah i hear ya. I realize I am asking a loaded question a group of people who love to "tinker" but my question was more to the technical hardware aspects. i.e. can excessive flashing and subsequent constant reboots lead to hardware failures?
From a moral standpoint and being an avid Rockfest attendee in Kansas City - no, you can not flash too much (please god, women only and not the whales)
From a technical point, yes you can flash too much. However, the possibility of you ever reaching that limit in the lifetime of a phone is almost nonexistent. We're talking about write cycles which with modern NAND chips and sdcards, it's in the hundreds of thousands. Some are lower since they obviously are not intended to be written to more than a couple times in their lifetime (BIOS, older phones where the NAND contained only the system, bootloaders, radio, and recovery, and so on). Other things like sdcards or even RAM have limited but very high write cycle limits. Ram obviously being on the extreme end of the spectrum.
In short you *can* flash too many times but you never will. Again this is an average as some memory can fail after a couple dozen writes due to flaws.
KCRic said:
From a moral standpoint and being an avid Rockfest attendee in Kansas City - no, you can not flash too much (please god, women only and not the whales)
From a technical point, yes you can flash too much. However, the possibility of you ever reaching that limit in the lifetime of a phone is almost nonexistent. We're talking about write cycles which with modern NAND chips and sdcards, it's in the hundreds of thousands. Some are lower since they obviously are not intended to be written to more than a couple times in their lifetime (BIOS, older phones where the NAND contained only the system, bootloaders, radio, and recovery, and so on). Other things like sdcards or even RAM have limited but very high write cycle limits. Ram obviously being on the extreme end of the spectrum.
In short you *can* flash too many times but you never will. Again this is an average as some memory can fail after a couple dozen writes due to flaws.
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Thank you!

write cycles

hello folks,
does anybody hav an idea of how many times a ROM or a custom ROM can be flashed on a device(HTC wildfire s)
thanks in advance
Good topic.. i was searching for the answer of this queation. Hope i will get it now.
Sent from my HTC Wildfire S using XDA
I have no idea. I've reflashed my phone so many times I thought my phone would stop working, but apparently it can take it There was a time I flashed a new ROM every two days or so, but these last two week I haven't really flashed anything new. But I must have flashed something new around 30 times or so, so far.
stil no answer..?
kantry123 said:
hello folks,
does anybody hav an idea of how many times a ROM or a custom ROM can be flashed on a device(HTC wildfire s)
thanks in advance
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abhi8569 said:
Good topic.. i was searching for the answer of this queation. Hope i will get it now.
Sent from my HTC Wildfire S using XDA
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johnnyspritz said:
I have no idea. I've reflashed my phone so many times I thought my phone would stop working, but apparently it can take it There was a time I flashed a new ROM every two days or so, but these last two week I haven't really flashed anything new. But I must have flashed something new around 30 times or so, so far.
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kantry123 said:
stil no answer..?
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Click to collapse
Its like this: average NAND flash chip will take over 1000 cycles,so no worries there.
When i say over 1000 i mean like 10000
Also important to know that life of a flash memory is beyond your capability to destroy it with flashing roms every day-so...no worries there too.
Now i would have to type whole night,or to copy/paste a bunch of tech stuff here to explain...YOU JUST HAVE TO TRUST ME
Another thing-VERY IMPORTANT-Constant overclocking WILL shorten the life of your CPU if not fry it like an egg....so avoid that if you dont really need it.
For OC you need to understand how much is safe,and then you can play all you want.
Hope i helped....answer in the end is-FLASH AS MUCH AS YOU WANT WITHOUT FEAR...
CHEERS!!!
Fikus011 said:
Its like this: average NAND flash chip will take over 1000 cycles,so no worries there.
When i say over 1000 i mean like 10000
Also important to know that life of a flash memory is beyond your capability to destroy it with flashing roms every day-so...no worries there too.
Now i would have to type whole night,or to copy/paste a bunch of tech stuff here to explain...YOU JUST HAVE TO TRUST ME
Another thing-VERY IMPORTANT-Constant overclocking WILL shorten the life of your CPU if not fry it like an egg....so avoid that if you dont really need it.
For OC you need to understand how much is safe,and then you can play all you want.
Hope i helped....answer in the end is-FLASH AS MUCH AS YOU WANT WITHOUT FEAR...
CHEERS!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you so much for your answer... i have no fear now for flashing roms...
am i the only one who flashed his phone over 300 times in 3 months ? God i probably shoulda asked same question long time ago. Well no harm no foul
baluuu said:
am i the only one who flashed his phone over 300 times in 3 months ? God i probably shoulda asked same question long time ago. Well no harm no foul
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Same here, probably more I switch between 3 roms, each have different strenghs eg. Cm7 for flash player, cm9 beauty, stock for sat nav & battery. I too did wonder how many flashes I would be able to safely accomplish. Sometimes I flash twice a day.
baluuu said:
am i the only one who flashed his phone over 300 times in 3 months ? God i probably shoulda asked same question long time ago. Well no harm no foul
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me too, but more out of necessity than curiosity....i'm still trying to find a reliable, stable rom that gives me plenty of storage room for apps.
it seems to me that with this phone you basically have to choose whether you want a "smart" phone that will totally die out on you every few days, or a "basic" phone which will not allow you to have really any personal apps, but which will then last for a good couple of weeks before giving you the dreaded "low storage" messages and start lagging like hell.
but yeah, i've had to flash mine literally hundreds of times in the last 6 months, and it's still going (well....just about, as i said, this phone has never been "reliable" as such)
Gloris said:
me too, but more out of necessity than curiosity....i'm still trying to find a reliable, stable rom that gives me plenty of storage room for apps.
it seems to me that with this phone you basically have to choose whether you want a "smart" phone that will totally die out on you every few days, or a "basic" phone which will not allow you to have really any personal apps, but which will then last for a good couple of weeks before giving you the dreaded "low storage" messages and start lagging like hell.
but yeah, i've had to flash mine literally hundreds of times in the last 6 months, and it's still going (well....just about, as i said, this phone has never been "reliable" as such)
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thank u so much..!
Well this isn't technically true. You can do no serious damage to your phone via flashing but every flash you do has the possibility of corrupting your phones internal storage due to it formatting the /system partition. This could create bad sectors on your phones internal mtd - this slowly eats away your internal memory by about 8bytes each time. That's about 8 ANSII characters (letters/numbers/symbols) so there isn't anything to worry about really.
From all the constant file transfers, installations and wipes I do each day I have about 6 bad sectors.
This is ABSOLUTELY nothing to worry about by the way, I just thought it would be interesting.
You would need around 500000 corrupted MTD sectors to lose the equivalent to ONE MP3 SONG on your internal memory.
Please note that its late at night here so my math may not be totally correct, but it'll be pretty close.
Sent from my HTC Wildfire S A510e using xda premium
benjamingwynn said:
Well this isn't technically true. You can do no serious damage to your phone via flashing but every flash you do has the possibility of corrupting your phones internal storage due to it formatting the /system partition. This could create bad sectors on your phones internal mtd - this slowly eats away your internal memory by about 8bytes each time. That's about 8 ANSII characters (letters/numbers/symbols) so there isn't anything to worry about really.
From all the constant file transfers, installations and wipes I do each day I have about 6 bad sectors.
This is ABSOLUTELY nothing to worry about by the way, I just thought it would be interesting.
You would need around 500000 corrupted MTD sectors to lose the equivalent to ONE MP3 SONG on your internal memory.
Please note that its late at night here so my math may not be totally correct, but it'll be pretty close.
Sent from my HTC Wildfire S A510e using xda premium
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thank u so much...but is there a way to wipe those bad sectors..??
thanks in advance...!

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