For what it is worth, the December 2003 issue (#116) of The Linux Journal has an article on USB Flash Drives and various tips for using them under Linux. The article "Floppies for the New Millennium" by Rick Moen is not available for general online reading except to LJ subscribers. See http://www.linuxjournal.com/ for more information on the magazine.
The article mentions a reported limit of about 10,000 erase/write cycles for the flash drives and gives suggestions for reducing the number of erase/write cycles. Rick Moen explains how to mount the flash drives and how to configure USB on one's Linux system. General info but seems to be helpful introduction for Linux users. The article gave the following links for reference: "Configure GCT's USB Palm Key in Linux" by Matt Butcher http://www.gctglobal.com/Download/3rd_LED/PalmKey/palmkey.html Although geared for a specific USB flash drive, there is some useful info applicable for other USB flash drives. This item does touch upon putting other filesystems, including cryptographic ones, on USB flash drives. (Although the drives tend to use FAT for wide compatibility, it is possible to put other filesystems on them.) ATAPI Removable Media Device BIOS Specification http://www.phoenix.com/resources/specs-atapi.pdf Memory Technology Device (MTD) Subsystem for Linux http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/ Includes info about CF devices and how to use them in Linux, including booting from them. (A booting USB Flash drive can be good news and very terrible news. Good for some tech support functions. Terrible if a used to sabotage computers by getting them to boot up from the USB device and run problem routines.) J.D. Abolins
