How to use flash drive ?

[Bob Goodwin - W2BOD]

Tim wrote:
> If you're referring to those warnings about "has different
> physical/logical beginnings," I see similar errors on other memory
> devices acting as disc drives (all sorts of drive partitioning or sizing
> complaints, etc.).  They're not quite formatted according to how Linux
> expects, yet it works.
>
> I wouldn't format them as EXT3, that involves lots of writing to the
> drive, and that wears them out very quickly.  They have a finite life,
> mainly determined by how often they're written to.  You want to use a
> filing system that avoids writing unless it has to (like when you save a
> file), or using mounting parameters that come to the same thing.  Some
> filing systems write back to the drive whenever you access a file, even
> just to read it, recording the access date.
>
> Think of them like giant floppy disks:  Not too reliable, useful for
> temporary shuffling of files.
>
>   
Yes, I am aware of the limited number of read write cycles on flash 
memory.  I really don't have much need for it but since I have it it 
appears to offer another way of transferring configuration information 
between FC-6 and F-7 on this computer.

I would like to retain some continuity in my thunderbird mail files for 
a change, perhaps even carry over the mail filters.  No matter what I do 
I never seem to have everything saved when the time comes to reconfigure 
a new version!  I'm just not that well organized ...

I would have been better off not looking at the device with fdisk ...  
That caused me concern.

Bob