ReiserFS or ext3 on USB flash drive?

[James Knott]

bassix-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> On 1/24/06, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On 1/24/06, bassix-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org <bassix-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> Is this feasible? Does anyone know of any potential pitfalls from trying this?
>> It may be feasible, but there is reason to disrecommend using a
>> journalled filesystem on flash, namely that journalling introduces a
>> "hot spot."
>>
>> Whether it's ReiserFS or ext3, you introduce a ~32MB section of the
>> device that is being *continually* updated every time any changes are
>> made on the filesystem.
>>
>> Flash devices can only cope with limited numbers of updates per
>> "sector", which means that you'll be diminishing the lifespan.
> 
> 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)?

As I recall, it's only writing that causes this.  You can read as much
as you want, without worry.
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