On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Tim Writer wrote:

And Linux already offers file systems that are more appropriate for this type of use. JFFS2, for example, includes wear leveling to minimize wear which can cause certain types of flash devices to fail much earlier than expected. IIRC, FAT stores critical information (the file allocation table and a single backup) in a fixed area of the file system. When it fails due to wear, you're toast, even if the majority of the device is in good shape.

Got that right. I used to have dozens (maybe hundreds) of floppies that would fail a format under MS-DOS (ie, FAT12) but would accept an EXT2FS just fine. Sector 0 was dying on the floppies iirc and EXT2 would just work around the problem whereas FAT12 could not.

...

All the manufacturers need to do is supply the filesystem driver when they install the s/w on the MS-Windows. Adding drivers all over the place is part of the MS-Windows culture.

In fact, many (most?) such products already come with software from the manufacturer, even if it's not stricly necessary.

Exactly so bundling a little more would hardly be something the manufacturer would worry about. Rob -- Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert-5LEc/6Zm6xCUd8a0hrldnti2O/JbrIOy at public.gmane.org, zzbrock at uqconnect.net Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org) "The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml