How to use flash drive ?

[Tim]

On Sun, 2007-06-17 at 11:30 -0400, Bob Goodwin - W2BOD wrote:
> it appears on the desk top and mounts but the fdisk data makes me 
> assume that it may not work if I treat it as just another memory 
> device?  I haven't tried writing anything to it and it appears to 
> contain no files ...

If you're referring to those warnings about "has different
physical/logical beginnings," I see similar errors on other memory
devices acting as disc drives (all sorts of drive partitioning or sizing
complaints, etc.).  They're not quite formatted according to how Linux
expects, yet it works.

I wouldn't format them as EXT3, that involves lots of writing to the
drive, and that wears them out very quickly.  They have a finite life,
mainly determined by how often they're written to.  You want to use a
filing system that avoids writing unless it has to (like when you save a
file), or using mounting parameters that come to the same thing.  Some
filing systems write back to the drive whenever you access a file, even
just to read it, recording the access date.

Think of them like giant floppy disks:  Not too reliable, useful for
temporary shuffling of files.

-- 
(This box runs FC5, my others run FC4 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

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