I'm definitely interested to hear Yamaha's response to this.

I guess the usual law applies here:
The manufacturer must secure replacement parts for at least 7 years after the end of production for a certain item. Some countries require a longer time, some less. They certainly won't be offering replacements parts forever, no company does this.

USA. A lot of Technology. Items. Like Computers And Their parts. Are at 2-3 years only.
Those laws. As You call them. Were written for Cars and Major Appliances.
Technology Has a standard 3 year life.
So really Music items. Are in a Grey area. And the parts They use. Could be in another Area.
We need to know. The Yamaha Policy. On supplying This Flash memory part. To Out of Warranty customers.
And the price? And For How long? Whether it is a 8 gig or a 16 gig even a 32 gig. As long as it fits the Socket.
It will work. The OS Should not care what size the disk space is as long as it is 8 gig or above.

I'm interested in Yamaha's response, but everyone knew the Montage had flash memory when they purchased it, They could find out all these details about flash memory before they purchased - the info was available at that time. Yamaha keyboards are the most reliable around - so Yamaha engineers didn't implement something they knew was going to be an issue for everyone. I think more likely that people will be choosing to have their 16GB flash memory module replaced with a higher capacity one before the 16GB ceases to function (or at least I hope that's an option in the future). User replaceable flash module would have been great if Yamaha makes a flash memory upgrade available - but the Montage is a beast as is and more than enough to meet my needs as is .... with a few O/S improvements, of course;)

Yes I Knew. But Then. I really didn't.
* We read mostly. What We need to know. About a subject. And Tend to discard the rest of technical Info.
To explain that.
I knew the Available details where it concerned. Using Flash. With a Computer. In perfect environmental conditions.(Your home Temperature)
A lot of the Above information. Was not available. At the Time. That I first studied Flash Mem. Specs.
Like. There is a total 50% or more Failure rate. By 7 years or less. And that was a Sliding Scale.
A small percentage Failed at 2-3 years. A Little more at 4 yr. A big increase at 5 yr. and 6yr's. And so on.
Max Life. Has Nothing to do with Real Life. Environment Has a lot to do. With the life of Flash Mem.
Take a cell phone. Many people have this experience. They left it in a very Hot/Cold car overnight.
And the Battery is ruined or near ruined. Flash memory. Though not as drastic.
Works the same With Temp. Extreames. You may have lost 1-3 years of life. From that same exposure.
This is because the Flash mem. Cell walls. Expand or Contract With Temperature changes.
So The number of times exposed to Changes And the more extreme the change is.
The more the cell wall. Expands or Contracts until it cracks/leaks. So Even 1 time.
Exposed to Extreme Heat. And the cell wall is Expanded. To a point.
It can never Contract back to its normal Shape. Thus causing permanent weakness in the cell walls.

SO. MUCH. ANXIETY.

@patrick

Tom,

I think there is a misunderstanding here. If the data retention is 10 years, that does not mean that the flash is useless afterwards. Only that it *may* lose the data in that time frame. But you can store new data and it will hold it again for many years. If we are for example talking about the user memory, then if you have done a backup (which you should do in every case) then if you starting losing data, you can reload the backup and things are fine again for a couple of years. Maybe it would then no no longer have a retention of 10 years, maybe only 7 years. This depends on the age of the flash and also on the number of write cycles. But it should still be years.

For the operating system which is written very seldom there should not be many write cycles. So the retention should be close to 10 years, typically. So if you install an operating system upgrade (or even reinstall the current version) then this would restart the 10 years as well. If you do this every couple of years then there should be no issue. The only issue could arise if the boot loader is in flash as well and is not overwritten with the OS update. But typically it is in ROM which does not have that problem. So if the OS gets damaged you an reinstall it end everything should be fine.

The other important point is that typically you have a smart flash controller that does wear leveling and more. I am not sure if that is the case with the Montage but it could well be. Either in hardware or in software. Even little cheap microcontrollers ususally do that. So flash controllers even refresh the memory automatically so that they are rewritten from time to time. I personally have several appliances which use flash memory and are much older than their retention time and still work perfectly fine.

In summary, I believe there is really not that much to worry about. A retention time of 10 years does not mean that it is end of life after 10 years!

Hi Stefan
You are correct I think about some. But I do not know. Because. Yamaha. Will not Address this subject.
I can't even get confirmed if there is ROM. In the Montage. or Whether Everything is on Flash.?????
And that is what is so Frustrating!. I have better things to do. Than worry about a keyboard

This Whole thing started. Because When I pass. I wanted my Daughter to have it.
So when I started really researching. The Flash part. I ask a Question. That Still has not been answered.
And as I further researched it. I keep finding more and more reasons. They Should Never have Designed it.
In this manner. It may have cost YA. $5.00 to $12.00 per unit. To have the Flash. In a user Accessible slot.
And use normal SD cards. They are more than Fast enough now. And Even if You did Keep it in one of the.
Sealed Compartments inside of the montage. Why not use a SD socket. Instead of the socket they chose.
That is just asking for trouble. Because. There is no conforming Choice of parts. IE: Not common.

i was just saying that i am getting anxious reading all this, Tom. That is all. i was unaware of any of this and my montage has been around temperature fluctuations.

@ Patrick
Well then sorry for the rebuttal.
The Cause of all the anxiety. Is Yamaha Not answering this thread.
And a week ago. I had not idea. How Damaging Hot and Cold Conditions could be to Flash memory.
Matter of fact. I was under the False impression.(That everyone assumes.) Data retention life. Instead of Max Electrical charge life.
And of Course. That is why it is Stated that way. By most manufacturers. Because They do not want to state the Charge life.
@Stefan and.....
I looked for 2 days and finally found Some 9 to 11 year old Flash cards I had. None of them worked. All these cards.
Were always kept indoors. None were recognized by the reader. The reader. Is working fine.
As It read some 6-7 year old Flash cards of the same type. These were all the same brand of Flash cards.

And All of this concern could have been avoided. By Putting a User access slot for Flash. And using SD Cards
But you can not charge $100 to $300 for a SD card. I am just guessing on the price. But it is a $5.00 part.
That can only be loaded and then obtained from Yamaha. So I am guessing Parts Profit was the motive here
In designing it in this horrible proprietary manner.

I am right about the Hot/Cold problem.
But. It may appear I misread and or did not understand Flash Mem Life.
And is that a relief!
And there is just too much conflicting information. So still room for doubt

Anyway From The Technology and Lifecycle of SSD - what you need to know
The ins and outs of SSD technology and lifecycle. How durable are they and how long do they last? What wears out...

How long do SSDs last?
This is the million dollar question, obviously it’s not possible to give an exact answer but… continue to read!

The trend in terms of SSD is to focus on developing products based on 3-bit MCL (TLC) memory. TLC memory is beginning to dominate the market for SSD. In common use, it seems that the 2-bit MLC technology is excessive in terms of durability and performance, not to mention the SLC whose necessity is dwindling and is almost completely disappearing. In other words, manufacturers are giving up an extended life cycle in favor of cost reduction to allow for the expansion of flash memory and their storage capacity.

However, it is seems that there is no worry about the duration of a SSD. In an experiment conducted by The TechReport on 6 SSDs to understand how they can withstand write operations, 2 drives out of 6 have managed writing operations for 2 PB of data and all SSDs tested were able to write hundreds of TB without problems.

Assuming a writing of 2TB per year, according to the results of the experiment, a SSD’s life span would equal 1000 years (2PB = 2000 TB / 2TB year = 1000 years). Even with an increased amount of data written to them, we would be able to use our SSD quietly for years and years and years.

Tom

Hi,

Steve Deming with Yamaha Customer Support here. There are a lot of different devices that fall under the flash memory heading. Yamaha has been using flash memory in various products for more than ten years. Generally, flash memory has been, and is continuing to improve its aging specifications. I do not have specifics about the flash memory which maintains the voice memory in the Montage. We have reached out to Yamaha engineering to get specific Montage details. We will let you know when we know more.

SD

Information from the Yamaha MONTAGE engineering team....

We designed Montage so that flash memory can be used for more than 10 years even if extreme heavy users frequently rewrite wave data to the memory frequently. In the case of average users, it can be used for 200 years logically.

Also, although the number of rewritable times of the TLC-NAND device used in the SSD memory of the PC is about 5,000 times, Montage adopts SLC-NAND that can be rewritten 100,000 times, thereby the Montage has achieved more dramatic durability and reliability.
--
Best regards.