Re: VFAT: slow fs corruption? [long]

["Albrecht Dreß" <albrecht.dress@arcor.de>]

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Hi Ben!

Thanks a lot for your comments, and sorry for the late reply, I did more tests  
in the meantime...

Am 19.04.07 01:00 schrieb(en) Benjamin LaHaise:
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 07:58:40PM +0200, Albrecht Dreß wrote:
> > - Are there known issues with VFAT in 2.6.11 which might lead to the >  
> observed problems?  Were they fixed?
> > - Is it possible to change the block size in ext2 to 16k (to match the  
> SD > card's erase block size)?
> 
> Flash cards tend to be rather flaky given that they are low cost  
> consumergrade commodities these days.  I would recommend getting a new card  
> firstand seeing if you can still replicate the problem.

I am afraid my explanation was not completely clear: I reformatted the *same*  
card which gave a lot of VFAT errors with ext2 and ran the test again.  Up to  
now, I filled the card several times and erased it, without any problem.  Only  
after killing (switch power off) the system in mid-air, I had a non-clean fs  
and one broken file (which is not surprising, afaik), giving input/output  
errors when I tried to read it.

So my first observation, that VFAT corrupts "somehow", but ext2 doesn't, still  
seems to be valid!

> Out of the box, I've had to replace 2 of 8 flash cards in the last 6 months  
> when they showed similiarly eerie data corruption when files disappeared.

Yes, I know... Unfortunately, it's not possible to get reliable data about the  
achievable life time.

> Doing an md5sum on the device 2 times in a row and getting back different  
> results is Not Good.

Good idea - will be the next check!

Thanks, Albrecht.


--
  Albrecht Dreß  -  Johanna-Kirchner-Straße 13  -  D-53123 Bonn (Germany)
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