ReiserFS or ext3 on USB flash drive?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 11:40:38AM -0500, bassix-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> That is a good point that I was interested in knowing. Will ext2 be
> OK? Will "running" an OS from flash memory greatly reduce it's
> lifespan due to this aforementioned limitation? Can someone illuminate
> how flash memory counts each "access"? Does access to every sector
> count as one access? Or, if I copy an 8MB file, does that count as one
> access? What if I copy 100 512K files (how many "accesses" would that
> be)?

Write accesses are what matter.  Some filesystems like jffs are designed
to automatically spread the load over the entire device when writing.
Filesystems designed for harddisks are not.  They are designed for
efficiency.  However if the device itself keeps track of how often each
block is written, it can shuffle things around to elliminate hotspots.
Many flash devices do this, but a lot don't.

Len Sorensen
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