Quote Originally Posted by Anvil View Post
If there isn't such a internal clock, well, it would be a disaster imho and the drive would last "forever".
Thinking about this some more, if it had a clock it would need a power source, either a small lithium button battery, or possibly a capacitor. I'm pretty sure there is no battery on the board (based on many pictures I have seen), so it would have to be a capacitor. But even the best capacitors would have enough leakage that I doubt they could hold a charge for months. So my guess is that there is no clock on board the Sandforce SSDs.

If I'm right, then it must either be using power-on hours, or perhaps it makes an assumption, like 8 hours power-on = 1 day of life. Either way, it could get the throttling way wrong for non-standard usage, like the guy I mentioned who only powers his SSD on one day a month.