usb memory stick and ext3

[Lonni J Friedman]

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Vu Pham <vu at sivell.com> wrote:
> I have a client who uses usb memory stick for backup of their database. The
> memory stick is formatted as ext3 and mounted then database is copied over
> at night. Everyday the same set of files ( same names  ) are copied over.
>
> I notice that for an empty stick, cp copies files at a reasonable speed but
> for a stick that already has data, cp runs extremely slowly. After a
> reformat ( mkfs.ext3 ) the cp runs fast again.
>
> Any reason for this ? Anyone uses memory stick for backup ? Any
> recommendation ?

Your realize that SS media have a woefully inadequate lifespan, and
using them for backups is just about pointless.

Also, what's the point in putting a journaled filesystem on a USB
stick?  IO perf is quite poor on most of them to begin with, and with
the journaling overhead, its got to be atrocious.



-- 
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L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
LlamaLand                       https://netllama.linux-sxs.org