Flash Drives Sanity Check

[Chuck Swiger]

Graham Bentley wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone had any experience
> of running FreeBSD out of Compact Flash ?

I would consider using NetBSD instead, as that OS seems to support a 
stripped-down config somewhat easier than FreeBSD (or PicoBSD).  I am using 
NetBSD on a Soekris 4801 box via CF:

http://www.soekris.com/net4801.htm

> The HDD to Flash adapters are around 15GBP
> here and 1GB of Flash about 70GBP
> 
> I know there are some projects around that use
> Compact Flash (like Openbrick) but I was thinking
> more in terms of running a stripped down desktop
> workstation.
> 
> Does CF stand lots of read / write operations ?

Not really.  You've identified a major concern.

> I read somewhere that it has quite low life
> expectancy ?

Many CF cards are only rated for 10K or 20K writes, although I believe that 
some newer CF cards will handle 50K to 100K writes.  It is highly recommended 
that you mount filesystems read-only or at least noatime, to avoid scribbing 
non-significant updates to the superblock and common directories.

It's also a good idea to mount /var on a RAM disk.

CF is better suited for embedded applications like firewalls and the like than 
it is for general-purpose use.

-- 
-Chuck