From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1OJ7rl-0003rp-W3 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 31 May 2010 16:29:30 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9B9D6E085E; Mon, 31 May 2010 16:28:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 71C62E085E for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 16:28:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1EFFE1B402A for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 16:28:07 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at gentoo.org X-Spam-Score: -2.849 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.849 required=5.5 tests=[AWL=-0.250, BAYES_00=-2.599] Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 4sRoa3IwxUxD for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 16:28:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lo.gmane.org (lo.gmane.org [80.91.229.12]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 805DF1B40D8 for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 16:27:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OJ7qE-0006nN-Qg for gentoo-user@gentoo.org; Mon, 31 May 2010 18:27:54 +0200 Received: from jolson120499.dsl.visi.com ([209.98.66.217]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 18:27:54 +0200 Received: from grant.b.edwards by jolson120499.dsl.visi.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 18:27:54 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org connect(): No such file or directory From: Grant Edwards Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: rsync to a USB stick Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 16:27:46 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <201005291001.50752.michaelkintzios@gmail.com> <20100529075931.5e49c2ce@osage.osagesoftware.com> <20100530114821.577a00bc@zaphod.digimed.co.uk> <20100531090909.792da6d0@digimed.co.uk> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: jolson120499.dsl.visi.com User-Agent: slrn/pre0.9.9-102 (Linux) X-Archives-Salt: cbcc8206-7e7e-4cdb-ae8f-dcd0317e144a X-Archives-Hash: 73ecc988f8d1a9b1b50030d68862ac28 On 2010-05-31, Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Sun, 30 May 2010 14:20:36 +0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: > >> > You're assuming that each backup only writes once, which is far from >> > true. If you mount a drive with the sync option, the FAT is updated >> > for every block you write, so even a single file can cause thousands >> > of writes to the same location. >> >> And you're assuming that the flash controller chip in the USB drive >> doesn't do wear-leavelling. > > Even with wear levelling, writing in sync mode still does thousands of > writes. They may be more spread out, but there are still a lot more than > one per day and the previous assumptions are still false. Agreed. Sync writes will definitely wear out flash sooner, but it's not as bad as one might think since flash controller chips _generally_ do wear levelling and may even do bad-block management that will swap in spare blocks when wornw blocks start to go bad. Of couse, none of the USB thumb-drive vendors will ever spec any of that, so you have no way of actually knowing. -- Grant