[SOLVED] ex2 or ex3 for install on SD Card

[jdizzle]

Recently did a full install on a 8 gig SD card for my Asus eee 900 (4g ssd variety). Well, first of all, I must say it's awesome! However I just realized that I installed it as ex3 and I see now (through some online research) that ex2 may ( or may not) be better. I finished all my tweaks and and set it up just the way i like it and don't want to do a reinstall if possible.

Questions:

1) Is ex2 really that much better for a SD card? Why or Why not? I know there is something about "journaling" that can decrease the life of the card. True or Myth?

2) Can I change it to ex3 with out wiping the whole disk?

3) OR Can I just change some settings to get ex2-like function from ex3? (if that makes any sense...basically turn off everything that makes ex3 different from ex2)

Per some online instructions i found online, I changed a relatime to noatime setting as well as changing my firefox cache to ram disk (sorry don't remeber exactly, but i found it a ton of places to reduce flash memory writes). I haven't changed any I/O stuff... too much for me at this point.

Well...one more...

3) anyone have any more advice on running Mint 7 from a SD card?

I'd really appreciate it. To any one else with a Eee 900 4g ssd (or 701 as far as i know only the screen size is different). Mint 7 rocks on these little guys. Straight out of the box..AWESOME! Thanks Mint people! and Ubuntu people! Truly brought a new life to what I almost wrote off as a toy.

[emorrp1]

1) yes, journalling increases the number of read/writes to a disk which decreases the lifetime (ext3 was written well before SSDs were even conceived), ext2 does not do journalling
2,3) simply put: no (but there may well be a *very* obscure method I don't know about), formatting requires a re-install, losing all your data
You might also want to try ext4 which has SSD optimisations for not writing as often, despite the fact it still does journalling.

[jdizzle]

thanks for the quick response and the info. That's the first I've heard that ex4 is specially for sd. It looks like reinstall is my only option. Now I'm just curious about the life of a sd card. How long will this thing last. I'll reinstall, probably as ex2, but I'll do some research on ex4, and keep you guys updated.

[jdizzle]

I decided against a reinstall just out of laziness. I'm keeping it on ex3. Let's consider it an experiment. I use my netbook daily. Nothing crazy, just usual netbook stuff. I do sometimes download some music from time to time on it while at the cafe and I've done a couple movies. Korean net speeds are amazing. I got the card cheap and I back up everything important (which is nothing on this little comp). Not sure of the specs on this card though. I'll post them when I get them. How can I find out about the cards quality? Let's see how long it will last...

I'm already seeing small lines (scratches) on the metal copper-colored prongs on the underside of the SD card. I think they appeared after a movie download, but may have been gradually forming.

[emorrp1]

Those small scratches are perfectly harmless, they come about from inserting and removing the card, since the reader will have conducting metal prongs for interfacing with the card.