Your wording for the acronym it actually correct. Mine is more correct for meaning. MTBF is time until a repairable failure. MTTF is time to an unrepairable failure (or, in other words, the usable lifetime of the object). Here is a site (the first one google brought up) that makes this clear:
http://www.i-mtbf.com/ One should note that "mean" is a simple average. A particular object may fail out of the box, or last virtually forever. -- graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com http://webpages.charter.net/graywolf "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" ----------------------------------- Lucas Rijnders wrote: > Op Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:56:44 +0200 schreef graywolf > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> I almost did that, luckily I thought a moment before posting. MTBF, and >> MTTF are not the same thing. MTBF is Mean Time Before Failure which is >> the average time before needing repair. MTTF is Mean Time until Total >> Failure which is the average time until it is no longer repairable. > > Mean Time To Failure (to the first failure, that is) and Mean Time Between > Failures, they taught me. The first generally being longer than the second. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
