[email protected] said : > Inidentally, I just recalled coming across something regarding read/write > limitations of USB keys before they die, but maybe this has been resolved > enough for P:D to be viable on USB? > In any case, I'll try to take a read at the P:D archive.
lots of myths and legend on this ... and also unknown facts. Of course wear and tear is happening earlier on Flash memory, but there are no solid benchmark on this to my knowledge. Also recent flash memory chip controlers are able to "smartly" predict upcoming tearing, and/or reallocate dead blocks to extra non allocated space, and/or spread writing data over all the blocks to avoid hammering the same over and over. Unfortunately most of these techniques are heavily patented, so it's hard to know what's effective and what's marketting. One thing for sure is that, unless you write a software that is going to hammer your memory and write nonstop on it, it's unlikely that you'll reach the maximum cycles with a normal usage, unless you have a flash memory that has a sloppy or buggy wear levelling/balancing, or simply not meant for that. I would assume you are safe with todays' commercial SD,CF,USB keys, etc ... It's another story for rewritable Flash in some microcontrollers. I used to be cautious about this though, but I tend to care less nowadays as I never experienced any problems with that. For extra safety you could always make some system partitions read-only and avoid using journaled FS. but ... not sure it's really worth the trouble... ;) a. --- [email protected] irc.goto10.org #pure:dyne
