ext3 / ext4 on USB flash drive?

[Eric Sandeen]

On 8/29/13 10:46 AM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> So this is fundamentally a problem with the quality of the hardware,
> and that's not something the file system can really compensate for.
> And there's no way to tell whether a particular USB device has has a
> high quality flash device, or is a craptastic flash device.  It's not
> like we can query the device for "I ripped off the purchaser" bit.  :-)

Yes, this is the fundamental problem.

What's the best setting for the random blob of silicon on the end of
your usb plug?  e2fsprogs can't call tech support, even to get bad
answers.

We'd like to help in software, but we can't; we have no reliable way
of knowing most of the necessary details of this class of hardware.
It's not exported in any way.

So unfortunately we are as in the dark as you are in this case.

-Eric