Re: ECC RAM really needed?

On Fri, May 25, 2007 at 06:45:15PM -0700, Craig James wrote:
>We're thinking of building some new servers.  We bought some a while back
>that have ECC (error correcting) RAM, which is absurdly expensive compared
>to the same amount of non-ECC RAM.  Does anyone have any real-life data
>about the error rate of non-ECC RAM, and whether it matters or not?  In my
>long career, I've never once had a computer that corrupted memory, or at
>least I never knew if it did.

...because ECC RAM will correct single bit errors. FWIW, I've seen *a
lot* of single bit errors over the years. Some systems are much better
about reporting than others, but any system will have occasional errors.
Also, if a stick starts to go bad you'll generally be told about with
ECC memory, rather than having the system just start to flake out.

Mike Stone