Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>>> AFAIK, a live usb system would not allow me to write data
>>> persistently just like a live CD.
> How did you get this idea? Read [2].

While it does allow it, it does not allow it in quite the same way as
a normal Debian system.  E.g. it is not meant to be used day-in/day-out
and upgraded from release to release via apt-get.  It can probably be
made to work, of course.

>> If you want it to act like a hard drive, put a "hard drive fs" on it: ext3.
> ... or ext2 if you don't want a journal and reduce the r/w load of the
> device [1]:

>> ext2 is still recommended over journaling file systems on bootable
>> USB flash drives and other solid-state drives. ext2 performs fewer
>> writes than ext3 since it does not need to write to the journal.

I wouldn't worry about it nearly as much as the risk of data loss or the
burden of fsck'ing.  If you care about performance, then choose your FS
accordingly, but in terms of "wear out", there is very little evidence
that it's a problem that should be taken seriously nowadays (especially
given that a journal is actually an efficient structure on flash).


        Stefan