On Sat 27 Aug 2011 at 11:19:20 +1000, Scott Ferguson wrote: > Based on my experiences using ext3 as a file system for running Debian > on USB sticks. Single partition (no swap), logging redirected to vt12. > > 2 identical sticks (major brand) - identical builds - noatime enabled on > one, not on the other, both got roughly the same amount of use. > The one without noatime died earlier this year after approx 2 years of > use - the other has been upgraded to Squeeze and still works fine.
I have just put unstable with an ext4 filesystem on a USB stick and find your experience reassuring. Although there will be a backup stick it is useful to not have to anticipate the drive becoming defunct in a month or two. In what way upgrading will affect its lifespan I do not know but it will be interesting to find out! > Hardly empirical evidence but... I bought a larger USB stick (cheap and > nasty) early this year - installed Debian onto it, forgot to enable > noatime - it died last week. > > I'm not certain of the answer - but would strongly suggest enabling > noatime on the flash drive - and moving /tmp and /var to a non-flash > drive. Thanks for the reminder about atime. I had completely forgotton to enable it at install time or afterwards. The OP may be interested in http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2009/03/ssd’s-journaling-and-noatimerelatime -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110827123716.GE4474@desktop