[Discuss] USB thumbdrive, Linux only usage: FAT vs NTFS vs other? TRIM support?

[Rich Pieri]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:18:36 -0500
Brendan Kidwell <brendan at glump.net> wrote:

> For Linux-only use, what filesystem should I use? vFAT/FAT32 is
> clearly the standard, but doesn't it use unreasonably large allocation
> block sizes?

For Linux only I advise using ext2. Yes, ext2.The ext3 and ext4
versions incur a lot of extra read/write overhead for metadata
journaling which will impact the overall life of the flash chips. NTFS
does the same thing and should be avoided for similar reasons. Just
create a top-level directory with permissions 777 and you should be
golden.

Either that or exFAT which Microsoft designed specifically for
removable flash media. exFAT support on linux exists only as a FUSE
module so that has its own set of issues.

Or just use FAT32. It's portable, it works, and live with the fHuge
block sizes.

USB flash drives do not support trim. Wear leveling is managed by the
on-board controller.

-- 
Rich P.