I got myself a cheap, small no-name USB thumb drive in a tech mall in Singapore about 4/5 years ago. I used it as the main and swap disk for and NSLU2 for over three years with no problems at all.
It was slow as treacle for anything that required disk access, though the machine served brilliantly as a single-user mail server, small web server and ssh gateway. Never had reliability problems with the thumb drive. Eventually I upgraded to something from patriot that was a lot faster. IMHO, just go for it, use a reputable brand and look for one with a decent speed. However the difference in performance between that one and the second slug that had a USB caddy was very noticeable. On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <[email protected] > wrote: > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 2:19 AM, Doug <[email protected]> wrote: > > I wonder what the groups experience has been with low power drives under > Linux > > on the nslu2? > > not on an nslu2 but on my main laptop 3 years ago i got a 2.5in > CF-to-IDE converter cradle and put the fastest 8gb CF card in it that > i could get at the time (200x "professional" grade for cameras). i > used it even as swap (without self-destruct problems), for six months > straight. but, i found that there were truly dreadful pauses of up to > 20 seconds at a time, every 10 mins or so. apparently this was a > known problem, discovered more generally a couple of years later when > SSD drives became more common. > > the CF card's sector size, and those of SSD drives, is far smaller. > the smaller sector size tended to fuck up ext3's automatic defragging, > amongst other things which you could, if you really wanted to, find > out as a mere historical curiosity. i understand that these issues > have now been fixed. > > so, yeah - if you want something reliable, make sure it's for use with > professional digital cameras: they're a paranoid bunch who _really_ > don't like their data being lost, so the CF card manufacturers put in > plenty of spare sectors and automatic replacing etc. etc. and then > charge a premium for the privilege. > > l. > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [email protected] > Archive: > http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] > >
