On 03/10/2011 17:02, John Rumm wrote:
There are loads of test programs out there, and a surprising number are
actually quite poor at finding real world problems.

I used to write test programs.

It's very hard to find dodgy kit when you want it. Most things either
work, or fail completely. It was over a year after I had written a
memory test from examining the chip design that I first had feedback
that it was actually doing something in the slow mode it didn't find in
the quick 30-second test. I never did get hold of a flaky CPU.

Disks with flaws are of course easy to find.

Andy