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Maybe the question should better be "which is the maximum read/write cycles of NOR/NAND flash memory, and how is this translated into lifetime expectancy of a router running OpenWrt?"
Does anyone know?
I'm really curious to hear some opinions!
Thanks. 
(Last edited by angelos on 7 Oct 2014, 18:12)
No idea, but I have flashed my WNDR3700, WNDR3700v2 & WNDR3800 routers together over 700 times during the past 4 years (while testing my community build). No problems so far.
Most of the volatile/temporary files get written only to the RAM, so flash does not get that much stress in normal operations.
(Last edited by hnyman on 7 Oct 2014, 18:25)
This might be of interest: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 67#p238867
Unless you have an application that writes excessively to the routers internal flash memory, lifetime of the latter should not be an issue.
My Netgear served me for 4 years of constant flashing as well.
Thank you for your answers.
They just triggered another question I have...
How do we "count" writes?
I mean... if for example we change the contents of a file and then save it (in LuCI or in command line), how many "writes" have been made in flash? Can we count them somehow? Does counting depend on how many bytes/kilobytes the file is?
(Last edited by angelos on 7 Oct 2014, 18:40)
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