Solid State Drives For The Avaya Merlin Messaging.

[Dexman]

Has anyone had any experience with solid state replacement drives for the Merlin Messaging?

On paper, they seem like a "no brainer", but how well do they perform in real life situations

 

[kmefford]

I'm assuming you are talking about using a form of flash memory to replace the hard drive. If that is the case, it is a VERY bad idea. Flash memory is excellent for read only use but will wear out very quickly in a voicemail environment where data is constantly writing and erasing. Flash memory is rated for far less write/erase instances than a typical hard drive.

 

[tdaugirdas]

The nice thing about most Merlin Messaging units is that they will accept a hard drive of at least 20 MGs without a problem. The 007 MLM - chokes on anything much over 2.1 MG's (outdated BIOS)- and those drives are hard to find. So the merlin messagings should be OK for a while - until the supply of good quality 20MG drives dries up.

Tom Daugirdas,
President
STCG, Inc.
stcg.com

 

[Dexman]

I found an online dealer that now sells the flash memory drive for the Merlin Magix. The drives are priced roughly the same as standard hard drives.

It is a shame that these new drives would probably fail sooner rather than later.

 

[oasisbob]

Flash memory might not be that bad of an idea. Most flash drives these days have an abstraction layer between the drive's blocks and OS to distribute writes across the device to keep from hitting the write limit inherent in any single block.

eg, if a drive is formatted with FAT, the allocation tables will be written to many more times than most of the rest of the device. Without this abstraction, the portion of the memory holding the FAT table would die very quickly, which is very much not good for obvious reasons.

Depending on how busy your site is, flash memory could work quite nicely. How long will it take for you to completely fill the drive 10,000 times?

 

[Dexman]

10,000 writes would take quite a while. Small church. The R4 Merlin Messaging does get used, but not as much as most Merlin Messaging units out there.