Usage of 32 GB USB stick DataTraveler under Fedora

[JD]

On 04/15/2011 10:29 AM, James Wilkinson wrote:
> Joachim Backes wrote:
>> I heard that such sticks are only usable if the partitions are formatted
>> in fat32; formatting the partitions in ext3 or ext4 makes such
>> partitions and the total stick unusable, that means, the partitions
>> can't be mounted.
> Michael Cronenworth wrote:
>> I'm not sure who told you this, but the file system bears no significance.
> Mostly right: but many sticks have firmware and hardware performance
> limitations when they aren’t used with FAT32:
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/ says
>
>      In contrast, the more common SD cards and USB flash drives are very
>      sensitive to specific access patterns and can show very high
>      latencies for writes unless they are used with the preformatted
>      FAT32 file layout.
>
> and
>
>      Ideally, the drive expects all data to be written in full segments,
>      which is what happens when recording a live video or storing a music
>      collection on a FAT32 filesystem.
>
> and
>
>      Additionally, only one segment can be open at a time; alternating
>      between two segments will cause garbage collection at every access,
>      slowing write speeds to a mere 33KB/s. That said, the FAT file table
>      area (from 4MB to 8MB) is managed differently, enabling small writes
>      to be done efficiently there.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> James.
>
Yes - I did see considerable read/write delays after
formatting a flash that has firmware, with Ext3 filesystem.