Sd Formating

[ish420]

I'm a total noob when it comes to Linux and its file systems. I was just wondering which file system would be the best for Pandora and the SD cards, in terms of storage limits and access speeds. ei. ext2, ext3, jfs, etc.

 

[magicman5421]

well for compatibility, i'd suggest fat32, if you want to use it with windows as well
otherwise, ext3 is good, b/c no need to defrag it ever.

 

[Karel Jansens]

well for compatibility, i'd suggest fat32, if you want to use it with windows as well
otherwise, ext3 is good, b/c no need to defrag it ever.

Doesn't the card's firmware have already anti-frag stuff built in?

 

[PSyMastR]

well for compatibility, i'd suggest fat32, if you want to use it with windows as well
otherwise, ext3 is good, b/c no need to defrag it ever.

Doesn't the card's firmware have already anti-frag stuff built in?

I thought that was just bad sector blocking?

 

[cloud858rk]

Doesn't the card's firmware have already anti-frag stuff built in?

I'd hope not, because defragging flash memory is baaaaaaaaaaaddddd. Writing a lot on a card with finite writes is a no-no.

 

[Balzac2m]

Why would you want to defrag flash memory?

 

[senquack]

EXT2/3 will probably be the filesystems of choice, because they are more reliable than FAT32, allow permissions and symlinks, and have a very good windows-native driver

Fragmentation is a non-issue on flash media, because there is no penalty for seeks like a hard drive. Unless you are interested in keeping the data contiguous in case you have to do data recovery (which makes recovery more successful, usually).

 

[ish420]

Why would you want to defrag flash memory?

I've actually done that before. to my psps mspd. I had no idea it was bad. I was thinking of defraging my ipod. is that ok?

 

[sindbad]

There are no seek times on flash storage, so defrag is mostly useless

 

[anexanhume]

Although defragging is not really beneficial, it's not harmful either. Flash cards are meant to be re-written millions of times.

 

[Balzac2m]

defragment is for harddrives. If it spins, defrag it. You can defrag flash memory but its useless. Won't harm though as anex said.

 

[benjiro]

defragment is for harddrives. If it spins, defrag it. You can defrag flash memory but its useless. Won't harm though as anex said.

Don't be so sure about that. If the defrager try's to write the blocks at the start of the sectors ( Where the defrag assumes its a HD, aka 0 -> xx ), and you run a defrag on a regulate basis, to me there is a rather high chance that the blocks that are defined as first might die faster then expected.

There isn't a SSD manufacture that does not warn about using a defrager. Normal, a SSD, or flash card will try to spread the amount of writes over the entire card, to reduce wear & tear.

 

[crasherball]

i recently formated a 60gb usbdrive with ext3

but it turned out to have only 55gb left after formatting...
5gb of it was kinda taken....eventhough the drive was empty (since i just formated it)

thats kinda sucky isnt it?
is this a ext3-general-"feature" to take a high percentage of discspace just for the filesystem?

 

[WizardStan]

Don't be so sure about that. If the defrager try's to write the blocks at the start of the sectors ( Where the defrag assumes its a HD, aka 0 -> xx ), and you run a defrag on a regulate basis, to me there is a rather high chance that the blocks that are defined as first might die faster then expected.

Don't SD cards have built in wear leveling? It doesn't matter how often you write to sector zero because sector zero is never the same physical block twice. Or any sector for that matter. Or am I mistaken in how that works?
Other cards, like don't have such capabilities, as I understand.

 

[PSyMastR]

i recently formated a 60gb usbdrive with ext3

but it turned out to have only 55gb left after formatting...
5gb of it was kinda taken....eventhough the drive was empty (since i just formated it)

thats kinda sucky isnt it?
is this a ext3-general-"feature" to take a high percentage of discspace just for the filesystem?

You might expect 60gb to be 1024mb x 60 = 61440mb.

But... manufactures consider 1000mb to be their gig, which is only 60000mb. Wait, thats only about 1gb lost. Yeah... nevermind...

 

[WizardStan]

i recently formated a 60gb usbdrive with ext3

but it turned out to have only 55gb left after formatting...
5gb of it was kinda taken....eventhough the drive was empty (since i just formated it)

thats kinda sucky isnt it?
is this a ext3-general-"feature" to take a high percentage of discspace just for the filesystem?

1) 60 GB advertised in storage is actually 60 billion bytes, or 60'000'000'000 bytes, or 56 gigs of real space. This is because of marketing, and it really, really sucks.
2) All filesystems need to store which blocks are empty. I don't know if this is how ext3 handles it, but FAT splits the drive into blocks of a set length, numbers each block, and then sticks those IDs at the end of the drive. Then, if a program needs to write a file, it grabs the next number in the "stack". When a file is deleted, those block IDs are returned to the stack to be used later. That may be where the last gig went.

edit: my math fails. Gig is a billion, not a million.

 

[Megamixman]

EXT3 is journaled and does take some extra space in order to be able to recover if something happens to the filesystem. Personally, I like JFS. Powerful FS that doesn't use up a lot of CPU power.

 

[davecuk]

i recently formated a 60gb usbdrive with ext3

but it turned out to have only 55gb left after formatting...
5gb of it was kinda taken....eventhough the drive was empty (since i just formated it)

thats kinda sucky isnt it?
is this a ext3-general-"feature" to take a high percentage of discspace just for the filesystem?

That has nothing to do with the files system that is due harddrive manufacturers using bytes instead of bits for measuring the capacity (1 byte = 8 bits). Your hardrive is advertised as 60Gb but is actually 60000000000 bytes or 55.87935447692871 GB.

Edit: beaten!

 

[ish420]

EXT3 is journaled and does take some extra space in order to be able to recover if something happens to the filesystem. Personally, I like JFS. Powerful FS that doesn't use up a lot of CPU power.

That's interesting. I read certain FS boot faster than others than others. I forget which ones.

 

[Megamixman]

EXT3 isn't bad, it's just the routing checks on it suck. JFS is quite nice in that even the checks are quite fast.