On 10/29/07, Damien Hull <dhull@digitaloverload.net> wrote:
> I don't know anything about SATA drive numbers but I do know that flash
> has a limited life span. According to Wikipedia most flash drives can
> take 100,000 writes. After that there are no guarantees.
>
> 100,000 writes may sound like a lot but not the way Linux does things.
> I'm a little fuzzy on the details but here's what I know. Evey time
> Linux reads a file it also writes something back. I think it has
> something to do with date and time info. I'm not sure this applies to
> swap but if it does your going to kill that flash drive a lot sooner
> then you think.
>
> If any of the above info isn't correct just let me know. I'm a little
> fuzzy on the read and write stuff.
Sounds like you're thinking of 'atime', which when set during a mount
(and it's set by default), every file gets updated with the last time
it was accessed. Try "man mount" and search for 'atime'.
You can put "noatime" in the options field in /etc/fstab to turn off
the default.
How this relates to flash drives, I don't really know. Or care. :)
troy
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Received on Mon Oct 29 12:14:22 2007
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Mon Oct 29 2007 - 12:14:22 AKDT