1) I thought it would be nice to have a mageia to bring with me easily.
2) I have a relative who have problem with windows, and earlier did not grook mandriva to manage it herself. If the system is on a USB it can easily be mailed to me for system maintenance/upgrade/repair/whatever.
Anyhow i simply installed mgs3b2 on a Sandisk Extreme 32 GB USB stick - working great.
Now i need to make sure it do not wear out. Could not find any info by retailer nor sandisk web site, so i mailed them and they responded cryptically that as this is a end user product the cannot supply wear leveling technology or datasheet.
Oh whell then we buy transcend which use dynamical wear levelling: http://www.transcendusa.com/support/dlc ... GJF700.pdf
Another manufacturers repś reply: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.ph ... ostcount=5
Then there is the question of TRIM support to make wear leveling work better.
an idea here is to reserve unpartitioned space to ensure head room for wear levelling
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.ph ... stcount=14
Best would be if the controller support TRIM.
I see no reason for why not implementing an already developed technology. Should not depend on wether the interface is USB or SATA.
For a "seroius" install, best is probably to use a good tool to format it intelligently and align the filesystem
http://superuser.com/questions/379074/h ... ose-consid
Then there is the question of what filesystem to use. ext4 use space more efficiently. Journal cause wear but saves from other problems.
Summing up:
1) Chose drive that use wear levelling. Possilby that undertsand TRIM (And make sure the system use it)
2) choose filesystem and variant/mode i.e ext4 and i prefer journalled (more wear and delay on the stick but survives other errors system hangs better)
3) format, includning align filesystem. Do not forget swap even if you paln not to use it.
Another option would be to use a CF card (actually thinner so even easier to send by post) but need a relatively clumsy USB interface (if the computer do not have PC-card slot or similar for FS reader)
But still the questions are the same. Or possibly worse: CF-card is IDE? so it can by specification not support TRIM?
Anyone have any other input?