On 2020-08-21 21:02, Patrick Bartek wrote:
Hi! All: For my Homebuilt NAS [specs below], I've decided on a very small 32GB SanDisk flash drive for the system drive to keep the 6 available SATA II connectors free for storage drives. But I'm concerned about writes wearing out the flash drive too soon. I don't know if it has wear leveling built in. Nothing in the specs about it. So, worse case, I'll assume it doesn't. For that reason, I thought EXT4 without journaling would work well. No journaling -- issues that causes aside -- would reduce writes a lot. Then I came across F2FS which I hadn't heard of. After some reading, it seems the perfect filesystem for my purposes: It's more "modern" and faster than EXT4, designed specifically for solid state devices, and available in the Debian Repo. (I plan to use OpenMediaVault NAS software which is Debian based.) Opinions? Suggestions? Recommendations? Thanks B THE BOX: ASRock 770DE+ BIOS/MBR Only MB (EFI/GPT Not Supported), AMD Phenom II X4 CPU at 3.0GHz, 8GB DDR2 RAM (16GB Max), 6 SATA II, 1 IDE (Master and Slave) -- IDE DVD Writer on Master, 1 Floppy connector, but no floppy drive, 6 USB 2.0/1.0, 1GB ethernet
I ran a Samba server and a backup server on my SOHO LAN using SanDisk Ultra Fit 16 GB USB 3.0 flash drives with ext4 for several years. I installed Debian just like I would for a HDD or SSD. The computers worked, and the flash drives did not wear out. But, they saw light use.
I used a 2015 MacBook Pro 15 with VirtualBox and a Debian desktop as a daily driver for about two years. I used a SanDisk Ultra Fit 128 GB USB 3.0 flash drive with a macOS filesystem for Time Machine backups. After several months, I was awoken in the middle of the night by the smell of burnt electronics -- the flash drive had died. Now the Mac has a SanDisk 128GB High Endurance Video microSDXC Card with an microSD to SD adapter. The SD adapter sticks out further than the Ultra Fit. I no longer use the machine as my daily driver. The SD card has not failed after a year of light use.
If I wanted to use a USB flash drive as a Debian system drive again, I would probably just go with an Ultra Fit 16 GB and ext4. They are inexpensive; and if they fail too often, I would try a high endurance SD card and USB adapter.
Tuning the system to minimize flash drive writes sounds appealing, but I never had much success at it. Mounting the root filesystem with 'relatime' or 'noatime' options sounds like a good way to break things, and I'm not going to audit an entire Debian system to figure it out. I tried running without swap -- that is a good way to crash your systems. I have not tried alternate filesystems, because I want to be able to boot a standard Debian Installer and run the rescue console when needed (thus precluding ZFS, which I really want). One trick I have not tried is a USB disk on module. Eventually SSD's became cheap enough that I replaced all of the USB flash drives, so I have not pursued this.
David