Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!news-out.readnews.com!transit3.readnews.com!panix!not-for-mail From: Grant Edwards Newsgroups: alt.os.linux.ubuntu,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.hardware Subject: Re: Wear leveling for the poor? (FAT filesystem on Flash drive) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:36:15 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: dsl.comtrol.com X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1343054175 23979 64.122.56.22 (23 Jul 2012 14:36:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:36:15 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/pre1.0.0-18 (Linux) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:5719 comp.os.linux.hardware:1337 On 2012-07-22, Jonathan N. Little wrote: > Ignoramus22200 wrote: >> I have a Nikon D80 camera. It uses Fat16 or some such filesystem on >> its SDHC drives. [...] >> The problem is that, after every couple of months, the Flash drives >> crap out and need to be replaced. > Simple, don't delete the images when they are transferred until the card > is almost full. And when he does transfer images only transfer the new > ones, i.e., don't overwrite existing. Most s/w like Shotwell have a > setting for that. My guess is that won't help. If there's no wear-levelling, it's probably the allocation table blocks and the meta-data tables that are wearing out. Those blocks get erased and overwritten each time you add a file. Couldn't hurt to try, though... I would expect a quality flash card (SD, CF, whatever) would do internal wear levelling and bad-block replacement. But, back when I was working on a product that included a CF card, we couldn't gey a single vendor to specify any sort of failure rate, reliability, or wear-levelling. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I'm having BEAUTIFUL at THOUGHTS about the INSIPID gmail.com WIVES of smug and wealthy CORPORATE LAWYERS ...