[gentoo-user] Re: rsync to a USB stick

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-05-30, Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 29 May 2010 07:59:31 -0400, David Relson wrote:
>
>> Indeed flash drives _do_ have a lifetime.  My recollection is that it's
>> in the thousands of writes if not the hundreds of thousands of writes.
>> Assuming a life of 1,000 writes and you backup once daily, that's 3
>> years of backups.  10,000 writes would be 30 years.  Of course if you
>> backup every hour, 10,000 writes is a year (or so).
>
> 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.

-- 
Grant