Flash Wear Estimate Calculator

Work out flash wear estimate instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Flash Wear Estimate Calculator

Flash wears by erase cycle, not by write, so appending records until a sector fills before erasing spreads the wear enormously. Sixty-four byte records in a 4 kB sector give 64 writes per erase, turning 480 writes a day into just 7.5 erase cycles.

Formula

Flash wear

records per sector = sector size / record size; erase cycles per day = writes per day / records per sector

Worked example

With the default values below, Flash Wear Estimate Calculator returns Expected life of 36.53. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Rated erase cycles: 100,000 cycles
Writes per day: 480 writes
Sector size: 4 kB
Record size: 64 bytes

Results

Expected life: 36.53 years
Erase cycles per day: 7.50 cycles/day
Records per sector: 64 records
Total writes before wear-out: 6,400,000 writes

Step by step

1Values used
2Flash wear
3Expected life= 36.53 years
4Erase cycles per day= 7.50 cycles/day
5Records per sector= 64 records
6Total writes before wear-out= 6,400,000 writes

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is a circular log buffer standard practice?

It appends until the sector is full, then moves to the next, erasing only when it wraps. That multiplies effective endurance by the records-per-sector factor.

Does wear levelling help further?

Yes. Rotating across many sectors multiplies endurance by the sector count, which is how filesystems and EEPROM emulation layers reach millions of effective writes.