swap partition on USB pendrive

Forum: USB booting
Topic: swap partition on USB pendrive
started by: tripes_inn

Posted by tripes_inn on Jan. 18 2006,19:22

I have dell laptop celeron 466 mhz, 96 mo RAM. I take off the noisy hard disk and booting DSL on usb pendrive.

RAM is usually use at almost 80/100 then it freeze sometimes.

I have create 198 mo swap partition but i don't know how to use it : mkswap

Posted by doobit on Jan. 18 2006,19:59

You don't want to have a swap partition on your USB pen drive because it will quickly ruin the drive. I suggest buying a little more RAM so you can run toram.

Posted by tripes_inn on Jan. 18 2006,20:06

yes i will have some.

i arrive to swapon :

now it run with RAM usage 67,2M/92 M (72/100) and

swap used : 45,2M/189M (23/100)

why is it dangerous ?

Posted by ~thc on Jan. 19 2006,09:36

pendrives are made of flash ram with a limited amount of (~10000 to 100000) write accesses per unit. placing swap files on such a device is usually a very bad idea.

Posted by tripes_inn on Jan. 19 2006,12:33

ok, ok !!

I was so proud of myself...

a friend will give me pc 100 ram and I will enjoy toram.

thanks

P.S: how long can I stay with swap on usb ??

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 19 2006,17:56

It depends on how much heavy swap usage exists.

It could kill your USB flashdrive anywhere from a few hours to a few days of use.

Posted by tripes_inn on Jan. 21 2006,11:57

still thinking about swap....

why can't I use DOS swapfile, knoppix.swp, create on usb
when I boot on HD .

or how, because mkswap and swapon don't find it.

Posted by tripes_inn on Jan. 22 2006,12:52

do I need to erase knoppix.swp to ? does it work the same way as a real swap partition ?? can it damage usb pen ?

Posted by justauser on Jan. 22 2006,18:41

Quote (tripes_inn @ Jan. 21 2006,06:57)

still thinking about swap....

why can't I use DOS swapfile, knoppix.swp, create on usb
when I boot on HD .

or how, because mkswap and swapon don't find it.

As others have said, it the issue isn't DOS or whatever, putting swap on a USB flash key will fry the key becuase it has a limited number of writes.

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 22 2006,18:42

You can make a DOS swap partition on your MSDOS hard drive partition.

However, I would not recommend it for a USB flash drive.

It gives you the same problems:

Too many writes to the drive and your drive will die.

Posted by tripes_inn on Jan. 22 2006,22:01

thank you all. I give up swap question.
now I'm discovering monkey web server...
interresting too.