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Old 24th February 2012
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by daemonfowl View Post
Some would argue that on usbs , the best filesystem to use is non-journaled .. fat32 or ext2 .. as less writing is imposed on the usb fragile sectors .. then this would extend the life of the medium ..
Two thoughts:
  • When flash devices first came to market, writing could be done to some sectors more than others, thus they could be "prematurely" worn out relative to all memory on the device. Most recent flash memory has wear-leveling algorithms implemented such that writes are more evenly distributed throughout what memory is available. This is a frequent question on misc@, & the general consensus is that the gymnastics some go through to prolong the life of CF cards isn't really worth the effort.
  • A 4GB flash drive cost me ~$5.00US this past week. Is it really worth it to bother with trying to preserve it? If the data is important, it should be backed up just like any other storage device anyways.
Quote:
are there any security-risk consequences ?
The general rule is if the bad guys have physical access to any storage device, they will in time have access to any data on it.
Quote:
is there a way to secure access to it ?
Look at the -c switch to bioctl(8). However, if the bad guys have stolen a flash drive, laptop, etc., encryption will only slow them down. You should assume the worst suspecting they will have access to the data if they really want it.
Quote:
can I install *BSD on a fat32 formatted usb ?
daemonfowl, since you have installed OpenBSD lately on multiple machines, do you recall whether you could change the default FFS filesystem on the boot partition? Studying Section 4 of the FAQ is not only allowed, it is highly recommended.
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