Flash longevity

[Eric Smith]

Jay wrote about flash problems:
> It wasn't a swap partition I created in flash. It was an
> OS install partition (to install the OS FROM, not to). [...]

Vassilis wrote:
> This is very weird, although some automated installations perform
> a defect scan on the "target drive" and this will destroy the Flash.

A defect scan will overwrite the contents of flash (perhaps a few times),
but it won't "destroy the flash", it will just lose the contents.

Even without wear levelling, each flash sector is good for at least
tens of thousands of writes, and usually hundreds of thousands.

Eric