The best OS to deal with Flash Cards

[Francois Ouellette]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>
To: <tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org>
Sent: Monday, 29 August, 2005 11:08
Subject: Re: [TLUG]: The best OS to deal with Flash Cards


> | From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
>
> | As for OS, well watch out for redhat/fedora and a few others that have
> | auto mounting of usb memory devices, since they have sync enabled by
> | default in a lot of cases, and vfat with sync enabled is very slow and
> | causes a ton of extra updates of the FAT tables and can actually wear
> | out a flash card very quickly if it doesn't have decent wear leveling
> | (and even if it does, it will still reduce its life span).
> |
> | Not sure where the hotplug or udev or whatever scripts are that decide
> | on the mount options for new devices, but hunt it down to be sure.
>
> This worried me.  I'd not heard it before.  So I did some googling.

Flash cards have a maximum number of times they can be written to. As simple
as this!
I remember seeing specs talking of about 1000 as a maximum, but this can
vary between brands.

So don't use them as an external disk device! They can be read as much as
you like, but writing is limited...

  François Ouellette
<fouellet-cpI+UMyWUv9BDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>



--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml