Persistent /home on flash drive: How to avoid burn-out?

[Capricorny]

I have set up a peristent /home on a flash drive, but I can foresee a problem: Because the image is updated all the time with cache/temp/conf-files, the flash drive will not last very long with intensive system use. (Typically, 10000 writes are guaranteed.) Is there a (relatively simple) way to have /home on a ramdisk, but reading from an image on boot, and updating that image on shutdown?

[Béèm]

Just a side question.
Where did you find the info about max writes.
I checked some brands and they are amazingly silent about such a figure.

[Capricorny]

TwinMOS gives data for USB pendrive here (min 10 000 r/w): http://www.twinmos.com/flash/flash_p_usb20_md_s1.htm
And for SD/USB combo here("min 100 000 erase cycles"): http://www.twinmos.com/flash/flash_p_usd2.htm

As many have experienced, flash drives may burn out fairly quickly if they are used as ordinary RAM, or a write-intensive harddisk.

[Béèm]

Thank you, that's disturbing news.
I wonder why this is as at first sight I don't see a technical reason.
For CD/DVD RW there is a limit but there is a technical reason.
Puzzled.

[malaire]

I have set up a peristent /home on a flash drive, but I can foresee a problem: Because the image is updated all the time with cache/temp/conf-files, the flash drive will not last very long with intensive system use. (Typically, 10000 writes are guaranteed.) Is there a (relatively simple) way to have /home on a ramdisk, but reading from an image on boot, and updating that image on shutdown?


I don't know if this helps at all, but Puppy Linux (http://www.puppyos.com/) seems to have solved this problem.
You can read more about that from How Puppy works (http://www.puppyos.com/development/howpuppyworks.html)

Still, this might be far too difficult to implement in Knoppix.

[Capricorny]

I don't know if this helps at all, but Puppy Linux (http://www.puppyos.com/) seems to have solved this problem.
You can read more about that from How Puppy works (http://www.puppyos.com/development/howpuppyworks.html)
Still, this might be far too difficult to implement in Knoppix.
Thanks for the links! It should not be too difficult to do in Knoppix, and I wonder if something like this is not already in use.

[Béèm]

Using Puppy Linux as well, I asked the question here: http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=10988
So in Puppy Linux, there isn't much activity on the save (persistent home) file at first sight.

[Béèm]

The thread I referenced in my previous post here has been updated.
Also this http://www.puppyos.com/development/howpuppyworks.html gives a nice overview of Puppy Linux's architecture