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FLCLFan

Member

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 76

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Flash drive as swap

Hey people.,

I'm trying to take my old flash drive that i dont use and turn it into some extra swap space for my computer so it doesnt always have to write to my disk. How do I go about doing this?

Thanks

cactus

Taco Eater

From: ಠ_ರೃ

Registered: 2004-05-25

Posts: 4,611

Website

Re: Flash drive as swap

mkswap /dev/<flashdriveBusID>
swapon /dev/<flashdriveBusID>

Add an entry to /etc/fstab for it.

You might want to do mkswap -L swapFlash /dev/<flashdriveBUSID> instead, then you can add the entry to fstab to have it mounted based on label instead of hardcoded busid. Or you could use UUID. Up to you.

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FLCLFan

Member

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 76

Website

Re: Flash drive as swap

Cool, it works

Thank you!

nowala

Member

Registered: 2008-10-08

Posts: 8

Re: Flash drive as swap

Perfect!!!!!!!!!:D

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Nowala

Gruntz

Member

From: Haskovo, Bulgaria

Registered: 2007-08-31

Posts: 252

Re: Flash drive as swap

and... what is the deal with using flash drive as swap?

fukawi2

Forum Moderator

From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 4,705

Website

Re: Flash drive as swap

I did a lot of Googling on it this afternoon (quiet day at work) and the general concensus across all the mailing lists for various distros is that it's a bad idea due to:
a) Limited lifetime of flash memory with so much write activity
b) Slow transfer speeds, even compared to PATA/SATA/SCSI, especially on USB 1.1

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AD28

Member

Registered: 2008-09-16

Posts: 161

Re: Flash drive as swap

THW did a segment on that last month:

USB Thumb Drive Vs. Hard Drive : 10 Years of Storage Development