User Feedback :: feedback + request for help on USB-pen-drive

Found a similar post to my question 1 now, at:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....97;st=0

Unfortunately, there is also no solution yet

Quote

I didn't fully understand this thing with destroying the USB-pens due to too my write-accesses. What do I have to care about on pen-drive installation? Is a swap partition been done automatically during installation which I have to remove now manually? Do I have to use the toram option in order to extend the lifetime of the USB-pen? When does DSL write to the USB-pen? I don't remember, but I think my sda1 and sda2 are mounted both after booting. Unfortunately I can't check them for any write-accesses.

If you have used one the frugal installs to pendrive and you did not select the persistent home or opt then you should be fine.

toram has no effect on writes to the pendrive. toram only allows for quicker reading once loaded into ram, as the reads are from ramdisk and not from flash device. If you have a usb1.1 it is very noticeable. But the initial load into ram takes a while. Think like cdrom. toram makes for faster performance, but obviously does not wite to cdrom. Running pendrive is the same concept.

Using toram or not, all the writeable areas are on the ramdisk and only when one performs a backup either manually or automatically, once established, via a shutdown. This is like using the flash device as a super large floppy and thus should not be a problem.

No swap partition is created via the standard install script.

On the otherhand, some users will try to do a traditional hard drive install to pendrive. This will cause excessive writes and thus shorten the life of the pendrive. Also, deploying the home= and opt=, persistentcy, i.e., a hybrid of frugal/traditional will also cause exessive write to the pendrive and thus not recommended.

original here.