Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
>> Does anybody have any experience with installing Debian (say Lenny) on USB
>> flash drives?
I have a small Debian system installed on my flash key. It's basically
a rescue system, but is just a "normal" Debian testing, which I have
been upgrading every once in a while with apt-get.
>> I would like to install Debian on my PQI 4 GB USB flash drive
>> but I am not sure which filesystem to use - ext2, ext3, XFS?
> Probably the best r/w filesystem for flash based devices in JFFS2.
My system does use JFFS2 indeed, but no it's very far from being the
best choice for a flash drive: I only use it because I needed
compression and JFFS2 is the only compressing filesystem provided
with Linux.
The problem is not that JFFS2 is bad, but that it is designed for MTD
devices, i.e. for access to the actual flash chips. In contrast, USB
flash drives do not let the computer access the flash chips directly,
forcing the use of a traditional block device emulation (which does
wear-levelling and things like that). So my "JFFS2 on USB flash" system
is basically working as follows: flash chips -> block emulation -> MTD
emulation -> JFFS2.
>> My primary concern/criteria in selecting a fs would be
>> throughput/performance.
> JFFS2 should do fairly well there,
You'd think so, indeed, but it's actually rather inefficient.
> Live is exactly what you want,
No it's not. You just a plain old normal Debian install. The only
tricky part of it is to make sure that your initrd properly handles USB,
and also to make sure you use UUID or LABEL to mout your drive since the
drive name will depend on too many factors.
Stefan
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