How long does the Intel SSD last?

I know the Intel SSD is a MLC type and many sites say MLC does 10,000 full re-writes before it fails and according to this site http://www.edn.com/article-partner/CA6319917.html says that MLC's will last 27 years even if you do a full format once a day. However Intel says that their drive will only have "3 useful years" but that answer is very broad.

As I will be running Windows XP, which does a lot more writes than Linpus does even after all the optimizations, how long will the drive last under the stress of Windows?

 

long enough to outlive the device...

 

So... could it last a good 5-6 years?

 

i reckon it could.. the intel estimate of 3 yrs was for 3 yrs of non stop use..

people have to sleep y'know!!

besides if youre going to use a netbook for 5-6 years, then you are definately in the minority.

 

You will either upgrade the whole machine or the SSD before it "wears out".

 

Well, i was just concerned about how much the Windows writes to the SSD as it frequently writes to it no matter what you do.

I also want to ask, is it that you only wear the ssd if you write on it, and no harm is done when you are reading from it?

 

Correct, SSD life is generally measured in write cycles; reads don't hurt it.

 

From what I've heard MLC SSD have 10,000 write cycles. Since the Aspire One has a 8GB SSD, does it mean that you can write 80,000GB (8GB x 10,000 write cycle) worth of data on to it before it wears out?

 

Depends on how good the wear-leveling logic is. My guess would be that you could get pretty close to that. Although you have to take each partition separately... I don't believe those physically change.