Do I need TrueFFS on INFTL Disk-On-Chip?

Joseph M Dupre (AVAB Inc.)
2005-10-21T23:44:50Z

I am a bit confused over the functions of nftl/inftl and TrueFFS in
regards to wear-leveling on DOC devices.

The DOC 2000 devices come pre-partitioned with a FAT filesystem on a
"disk" (BDTL) partition. It is my understanding that what M-Systems
calls "TrueFFS" is loaded at boot time from the "binary" (BDK)
partition. Is it this TrueFFS that sits between the FAT filesystem
and the flash that does all the necessary wear-leveling?

I am assuming that if I reformat the disk (BDTL) partition to Ext2 or
Ext3 or whatever using linux fdisk and mkfs, the TrueFFS is still
sitting there doing the job of wear leveling on whatever filesystem I
choose to use on the DOC. Is this correct?

So what happens when I re-write the BDK partition with code like
DOCboot or Grub? Is the wear leveling mechanism gone at that point
or is wear-leveling part of the "inftl" layer which still exists?
Where does the "inftl" reside? Is that part of the DOC or the
kernel?

Please advise before I burn out my DOC!

- Joe