Isn't flash more expensive than RAM? So why not just add 512M RAM and run your swap in ram? Keith "Jon M. Hanson" wrote: Michael Havens wrote: > I had a stroke of genius! (you are going to be proud of me for thinking of > this). This idea has been mulling around in my head for a while now. Wouldn't > it be lightning quick to put a swap file on a pendrive? No disk activity > would be needed at all! It would all have to do with the bus's speed. > > Okay, I looked into doing this a while ago and was wondering if things had > changed. > -1- touch > -2- mkswap > -3- swapon (max file size in bytes> > -4- add ' swap swap noauto 0 0' to /etc/fstab > > what are the drawbacks to doing this? how could I automate this? > > > man! why do most computers even have hard drives! Unless you are running a > business..... > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > The problem is that flash drives are fast at reading but an order of magnitude slower at writing. Also flash drive cells have a limited number of write cycles before they go bad. Some flash drives are smart so that they rotate around where they write to even out which cells are written to but they will eventually go bad and the size of your flash drive will slowly shrink. Microsoft Vista has a similar feature where you can plug in a flash drive and it extends memory. I would think it would mean swap space since even though flash drives are fast for reading they are no where near the speed of the memory on the front-side bus. -- Jon M. Hanson (N7ZVJ) Homepage: http://the-hansons-az.net Weblog: http://the-hansons-az.net/wordpress Jabber IM: jon@the-hansons-az.net --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss Keith Smith A link from my website to yours Submit Your Metro Phoenix Website __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com