Florin Iucha wrote: > > On Fri, Oct 26, 2001 at 06:38:51PM -0800, peter.clark at tides.com wrote: > > So I finally got a DiskOnKey today off of Ebay (some guy is > > selling the 8mb version for $30, which is $15-$20 cheaper than the > > listed price). And lo and behold, it really does work in Linux. I had > > been lead to believe that it would show up under /dev/sda1, but instead > > it is under /dev/sdb1. Maybe that's because I've got a zip drive, which > > is /dev/sda4. > > Of course, now that I've got it, the creative juices are > > running. I'm wondering if I can partition it (ext2/vfat). Or using it as > > a bootdisk. Or better yet, a mini Linux distro. Does anyone know if > > most modern BIOSs can boot from USB (since it is essentially a USB mass > > storage device)? Of coure, my address book and bookmark file goes on > > there. > > Now soliciting for cool/neat/practical ideas of what I can do > > with this thing! > > AFAIK this thingie uses flash, and flash memory has a limited number of > write cycles. Use it sparingly and back it up often. That's more of a past thing. The majority of flash memory on the market can be written 100,000 to 300,000 times. So even if it is used 10 times a day that still about 30 years of use on the low end (assuming the chip will retain the data for that period of time). With regards to failure their mtbf's are in the 1,000,000 hour range. DiskOnKey specs says it should be able to handle 1,000,000 operations (they don't make a distinction between reading and writing so make of it what you will) Eric