partition sizes

Forum: HD Install
Topic: partition sizes
started by: rage1

Posted by rage1 on Dec. 16 2004,03:44

The reason I,m asking is I have a flash disk 40 pin idle adapter,with flash card
acts as a slave or master hard drive.I saw a guy at a LUG,s meeting running
a real mini system off a 256MB jus like the one I,ve got.I,ve haven,t been able
to catch him again but would like get my adapter to do the same.

Posted by DonttPanic on Dec. 16 2004,04:28

If you're asking about how large a swap partition should be on a compact flash card, then my answer would be don't do it. As I understand flash technology, there is a limitted number of times that a flash card may be written to before it becomes corrupted. A swap partition usually does a lot of writes every minute, and would therefore significantly reduce the life of the CF card. So I don't suggest placing a swap partition on a CF card.

Posted by rage1 on Dec. 16 2004,04:36

OK I should a swap.To use as just a hard drive,how should it be done?? I know
it work,s ,I saw one running.I haven,t done a DSL H/D install just used it from
the CD and sorry to be so dumb on it but have no ideal how they setup this
little adapters.

Posted by AwPhuch on Dec. 16 2004,18:55

You can create a small swap partition on any harddrive and the "LiveCD" will autodetect it and start using it, even if it is running from a pendrive

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by codestorm on Dec. 16 2004,20:14

Also depending on the RAM on the system you're making, you could just not have a swap part at all. I usually run my HDD installed DSL on my 200MMX/64MB without swap - I usually only need it when running Gimp and Firefox together.

I'd say if you've got more than 128Mb RAM you should be able to live swap free, if you wanted to.

Posted by rage1 on Dec. 16 2004,20:44

Thanks Codestorm! thats what I needed to know because it,s not a pen drive
its a idle adapter that uses flash cards as hard drive

Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 16 2004,22:43

My advice is to use the "frugal" install of DSL instead of the hd install.

A swap file or a swap partition is BAD for flash memory because the repeated writes to the device will wear out the flash memory.

This is also true for some kinds of files/folders on a true hdinstall system. For example, logfiles and web browser cache also get many repeated writes and are not advisable for flash devices.

A "frugal" install will create a read-only OS image and you can still use the filetool.lst method of backup/restore to save stuff on your remaining flash disk space.

You can also directly access your remaining flash disk space for file storage but make sure that you don't directly save / point to any rapidly changing files like web browser cache in such a location.

Good Luck.