Flash Drive -- frequent writes?

[Dusty Chalk]

Do flash drives have a limit on the number of times they can be written to, or can they be written to indefinitely? I want to get an 8G USB flash drive and use it for swap (virtual memory)...I realize it's over the bus and USB, but it should still be faster than an internal hard drive, no? Seems like a good way to artificially boost my performance. Paying US$50-ish for 256Mb of internal PC133 SDRAM seems like a waste of money. I currently have a Sony Vaio PCV-RX550/PCV-7732 (depending on whether you believe the front or the back), which has 256M upgradeable to 512M.

I think the real solution is to get a new computer, but I'm just wondering if the above trick is worth trying...and besides, I'll have an 8G flash drive out of the deal if it doesn't work.

[tkam]

Yes they don't have any limits regarding number of times they can be written to but it would be much slower than an HD as USB (even USB2) just doesn't have the same bandwidth capabilities of SATA or even PATA.

[Dusty Chalk]

Yes they don't have any limits regarding number of times they can be written to but it would be much slower than an HD as USB (even USB2) just doesn't have the same bandwidth capabilities of SATA or even PATA.

I have IDE. And besides, wouldn't the bottleneck be the seeks?

actually, flash drives generally have a lifespan of a couple million writes per sector. error correction will shuffle the used sectors around, but eventually the drive "wear out."

Drat.