Fun with online ECC memory shopping

Hardware

Allan Jude famously quipped that OpenZFS without ECC memory is still more trustworthy than any other file system with ECC. This is true, but given the choice I’d still prefer to strategically deploy both.

Except, try typing ECC into a search engine or online store, and you get this:

Kingston […] Non-ECC
Kingston […] Non-ECC
Kingston […] Non-ECC
Crucial […] Non-ECC

eBay sellers were infamous in the late 1990s and early 2000s for doing this on purpose. You’d see a listing conveniently saying it wasn’t something, presumably to piggy-back on legitimate search results.

Entering -"Non-ECC" is also an interesting online store test. Some sites return only ECC memory, others don’t return anything.

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