flash RW limit and M$ re hdd design

[Someone]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

Interesting reading for the hdd professionals in this group.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/05/07/HNmsdiskredesign_1.html

"Flash memory has a limited lifespan of around 100,000 read/write cycles.
Heavy users would exhaust that in a couple of years but light users'
notebooks would have up to 40 years before the flash memory wore out, we are
told. "

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

Previously Alexander Grigoriev <alegr@earthlink.net> wrote:
> In Windows, USB flash disks are considered removable media.
> You cannot have a swap file on removable media and on a removable device.

> "Last accessed" time is also not recorded on them.

> On regular disks, with FAT(32) last access time has resolution of 1 day, and
> with NTFS 1 hour. This means it won't be updated more often.

> In Windows, removable media and removable storage devices have "paranoid"
> write-back policy. The data won't be held in write-back cache for long. Not
> sure why Linux would behave otherwise.

I didn't think this was removable flash we are talking about here,
but rather IDE-flash.

Still, it seems this is less of a problem with Windows. Doing
this with any UNIX-like OS will kill the flash pretty fast, since
last-accessed has second reaolution in most UNIX filesystems.

On the other hand, FAT32 has the FAT, where a lot of updates go.
Might still not live very long if used "normally" (whatever that
is...)

Arno
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[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

"Arno Wagner" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message news:2gske2F6dp4fU2@uni-berlin.de
> Previously Alexander Grigoriev <alegr@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > In Windows, USB flash disks are considered removable media.
> > You cannot have a swap file on removable media and on a removable device.
>
> > "Last accessed" time is also not recorded on them.
>
> > On regular disks, with FAT(32) last access time has resolution of 1 day, and
> > with NTFS 1 hour. This means it won't be updated more often.
>
> > In Windows, removable media and removable storage devices have "paranoid"
> > write-back policy. The data won't be held in write-back cache for long. Not
> > sure why Linux would behave otherwise.
>
> I didn't think this was removable flash we are talking about here,
> but rather IDE-flash.

And how would that be different?

>
> Still, it seems this is less of a problem with Windows. Doing
> this with any UNIX-like OS will kill the flash pretty fast, since
> last-accessed has second reaolution in most UNIX filesystems.
>
> On the other hand, FAT32 has the FAT, where a lot of updates go.
> Might still not live very long if used "normally" (whatever that is...)
>
> Arno