Thank you for reply Mr. Nelson,

That's the simplest solution I was also thinking.
Here are my timings.

# time cat /dev/mmcblk0 > /dev/null 
real    1m 52.01s
user    0m 0.55s
sys     0m 21.74s

However I think I have to take care that not partitions are being 
erased/written at the time when I run this script, right ?

On Wednesday, 20 July 2016 20:10:53 UTC+5:30, RobertCNelson wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Ankur Tank <[email protected] 
> <javascript:>> wrote:
>
>>
>> We have BBB based custom board with 256MB RAM and 4GB eMMC running Linux 
>> kernel 3.12
>>
>> *TL;DR*: Is there a open source application which periodically reads 
>> unread/rarely used partition to increase data retention? OR Is there any 
>> kernel service which can be configure
>>
>> *Detailed query,*
>> We have 3 sets of partition for OS(Bootloader, kernel+dtb & RFS) eMMC. 
>> One of them is recovery OS. Which is rarely read( none of the time 
>> written).
>>
>> Now as per eMMC manufacturerer,
>> "*If a byte is not read in 5 years there is no guarantee that byte is 
>> valid when read after 5 years.*"
>> To avoid such situation we want to have a crawler application, which 
>> would read all the unused/unread partition may be once in a year and 
>> increase data retention.
>>
>> I didn't find any open source application or kernel service/daemon which 
>> would handle that. But not sure If I am searching it correctly or not.
>>
>> Meanwhile If there is no solution available for this, I am planning to do 
>> it in following way.
>>
>> 1. Setup a cron job which would trigger once in a year and run a script.
>> 2. Script would read all the partition using dd and return.
>>
>> What do you think about this approach.
>> Let me know if you have any suggestion/correction/pointers for me.
>>
>
>
> debian@test-bbb-1:~$ time sudo cat /dev/mmcblk1 > /dev/null
>
> real 1m20.209s
> user 0m0.050s
> sys 0m14.530s
>
> That was for a 2GB eMMC, so double the time for a 4GB..
>
> But in reality, with eMMC, we are still only talking with the controller, 
> not directly with the NAND. So even a cat won't read every 'byte' as the 
> controller is doing it's own thing...
>
> Regards,
>
> -- 
> Robert Nelson
> https://rcn-ee.com/
>

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