On 2/12/07, Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net> wrote: > On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 08:16:22PM -0600, Chuck Cole wrote: > > Regardless of the other issues, flash RAM has a limited read/write > > lifetime unlike "regular" RAM or a hard disk. > > And this, folks is why you don't use flash-based storage for > read-write intensive operations, such as swap. Just don't do it. > It's not a good idea at all. If you want swap, use a hard-drive. If > you want high performance for swap, put it on the outside cylinders of > your hard-drive (the last partition). Better yet, have multiple hard > drives and put it on the end of each disk. Linux understands how to > increase performance across multiple swap devices. > > Also remember, the "swap = 2 * Physical RAM" is no longer necessary, > especially when you start getting into large amounts of physical > memory. Swap equal to physical is about as much as you need today, > and I generally use less. > > Anyway, back to the grind. Note that this flash-drive-as-swap is supposedly one of the new features of Windows Vista. This is from the FAQ [1]: Q: Won't this wear out the drive? A: Nope. We're aware of the lifecycle issues with flash drives and are smart about how and when we do our writes to the device. Our research shows that we will get at least 10+ years out of flash devices that we support. I have no idea how long a device would last with a similar setup under linux... [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx -- jonner