[Nottingham] RasPi USB Storage

[Martin]

On 01/04/15 10:07, Jason Irwin wrote:
> I planning on using a 64+GB USB stick as external storage for a RasPi
> running OpenElec. Before I buy one, is there any particular features I
> should look out for? Is one brand better than another? Are the mirco USB
> ones just as reliable?

For my experience of USB2 memorysticks, you can have a huge difference
in performance between makes. Note that "branding" has little to do with
reality!

Sorry but it is a bit of a web search to see if you can get any useful
comparisons/comments. For example years ago, "Super Talent" and
"Intenso" were clear speed leaders for their USB2 8GByte devices. Then
again, times change quickly.

For USB3: I've only got the two of them and they work fine on a USB2
system. I'm experimenting with F2FS with good results so far.


> I know USB sticks wear out, but that isn't a huge deal as it won't be
> storing critical data. It'll mostly be used for recorded TV etc. If it
> lasts a year or so, that'll be grand.

My experience has been memorystick wear-out after 3 months of ext4 on
raid1 (two devices) vs over two years for ext4 (non-raid) with good use
made of tmpfs for busy areas. That was for a school server and a certain
web server...

Bit rot was seen after about a year if the data is not rewritten :-(

(Now on SSDs 'cos they're so cheap as to why not! :-) )


There is this media player RasPi with a USB -> sata adapter...

http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/page/2/#slice-media-player-starts-shipping



Do not be tempted to use a USB HDD... Premature death by spin up
guaranteed...

Have fun!

Cheers,
Martin


-- 
- ------------------ - ----------------------------------------
-    Martin Lomas    - OpenPGP (GPG/PGP) Public Key: 0xCEE1D3B7
- martin @ ml1 co uk - Import from   hkp://subkeys.pgp.net   or
- ------------------ - http:// ml1 .co .uk/martin_ml1_co_uk.gpg