Writing to a usb-device

[Johann Spies <jspies@sun.ac.za>]

I apologise for a longish message.

I bought myself a device in which you can put an ide-device an which
communicates with the computer through a usb-interface.  I put a 60 Gb
hard disk and partitioned it into three normal partition (2xreiserfs
and 1 ext3) and a swap partition.

My first experiment was to make a local debian mirror using debmirror
- and I did not have any problems as I was downloading it from an
ftp-site in our network with a download speed of below 1 Mb.

I do have some problems with it when copying larger amounts of data
from normal hard disks to the device.

At home I have a 364Mhz Celeron with 64 Meg ram and I experience a
high load average when I write to the usb-device.

Using rsync to copy a partition to the usb-device stalled the computer
at the stage when it was copying iso-images. During one effort there
were usb timeout-errors.  That also happened when I tried to do it
using "find $1 -depth -xdev -print | cpio -dumpv
$2".  I then experimented with buffer in the following way:

find $1 -depth -xdev -print | buffer -u 100 | cpio -dumpv $2

and I could copy the iso-images without problems although it was slow.

I don't think I can use "buffer" with rsync - or can I?

Now my questions: 

1. Which is the best way to copy large amounts of data to a usb-device?
2. How can I install Debian on such a device?
3. hdparm would not work on the device (mounted as a scsi device).
   How can I improve the transfer rate?

Regards.
Johann
-- 
Johann Spies          Telefoon: 021-808 4036
Informasietegnologie, Universiteit van Stellenbosch

     "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with
      God through our Lord Jesus Christ."       Romans 5:1