Excessive Flashing

whobeyou · Postby **whobeyou** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:14

Ok so I'm an IT guy and I know the more times you flash any memory, you have more of a chance to screw it up.

I have a Mazdaspeed6 and Mazdaspeed3. We switch using cars each week. One week we'll take my car (MS3) and the next week we'll take my fiance's car (MS6). Each weekend, I take the hypertech tune off of one car and put it on the other. So far I've had no problems, but is this too excessive for the ECU? Am I at risk to fry my ECU?

Brigdh · Postby **Brigdh** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:14

Eh. The two things I would be concerned about is the fact that flash has a limited number of write cycles (and I doubt production ECUs have the highest count possible since typically they will likely only be flashed a few times during their life for recalls and the like), and if something happens during the actual flashing process to cause a partial or corrupted image to get loaded, you probably just bricked the ECU. I see it all the time at work, but our development devices have a backup chip that holds a failsafe image so that we can recover. I happen to know our production devices do not have this feature.

erod550 · Postby **erod550** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:14

That would drive me crazy having to wait for it to flash every week. Why not just get another one so you can have both cars flashed without having to unflash/reflash all the time.

whobeyou · Postby **whobeyou** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:14

erod550 wrote:That would drive me crazy having to wait for it to flash every week. Why not just get another one so you can have both cars flashed without having to unflash/reflash all the time.

I definitely agree man, it is a pain in the ### but worth it at the same time. I can't stand the 0-60mph limiter. I'm going to buy a Cobb soon, but for the time being I just have the Hypertech.

Brigdh - you bring up a VERY good point...I never thought of the quality of the flash chips on the ECU. Their write cycles probably isn't as high as it is on SSDs, flash drives, etc... I will definitely re-think my flashing strategy...

mOOsE · Postby **mOOsE** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:14

whobeyou wrote:I definitely agree man, it is a pain in the ### but worth it at the same time. I can't stand the 0-60mph limiter. I'm going to buy a Cobb soon, but for the time being I just have the Hypertech.

Brigdh - you bring up a VERY good point...I never thought of the quality of the flash chips on the ECU. Their write cycles probably isn't as high as it is on SSDs, flash drives, etc... I will definitely re-think my flashing strategy...

I would stop and then wait until you get the AP or hypertech. Supposedly the dealer can also read flash count, but I've not had any personal experience with that.

Justin · Postby **Justin** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:14

After reading the title, you have no idea how disappointed I am by this thread.

chromal · Postby **chromal** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:14

Hahaha

In all boring seriousness, when I hear about expected life of flash devices, it's usually expressed in terms of 10,000 reflashes or more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Memory_wear

Of course, you also hear about failures (in general) in terms of MTBF, Mean Time Between Failure, so 10,000 is an average, with some failing early, and others failing late.

Still, this conventional thinking would suggest you could reflash weekly for the life of the vehicle and not experience a failure. Of course, beware of Murphy's Law when doing anything to the car.

DJ · Postby DJ » Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:14

A Cobb resets the flash count every time you unmarry it

Excessive Flashing

Excessive Flashing

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