Verbatim 1 GB flash drive

[ndujoe1]

In recent day I had been using my 1 GB flash drive to run Puppy Linux 2.15CE. i put a linux swap partition on it also.

Two days ago the machine didn't read the flash drive and would not boot my settings.

the dmesg gave me this message

usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 2
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Vendor: VBTM Model: Store 'n' Go Rev: 5.00
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sda
usb-storage: device scan complete


I made a google search of
waiting for device to settle before scanning

But have not seen any solution to this problem. There were a few messages say that the usb read/writes were used up. But other posts said that the read/write cycle is 100,000.

Any one else run into this snag or discovered a solution to this problem?

[alienjeff]

I'm wondering if putting a swap partition/file on it is problematic. On a low RAM box running heavy-load apps, swap could be frequently used. Just a thought.

-aj

[ndujoe1]

You are probably correct about the swap partition idea. I search through my storehouse ( ie junk pile ) of computer things and founda 1 GB seagate that will fill the bill until a new hard drive arrives from Tiger Direct.

I was a bit puzzled when the flash drive when belly up so quickly.

[paulsiu]

Flash device have a limited life cycle. You can only write to it x number of times before it bellys up. It may be as little as 10,000 times. If you use the flash key as a swap space, it will quickly burn out the flash drive.

[Fanless_Puppy_Fan]

I read elsewhere, that you should make a tiny swap file even if you want to never use it. Apparently, machines will only use 50-75% of RAM before locking up without a swap file, but you make a <2MB swap partition, it will never be used, but you can get about 90% usage out of your RAM before it shuts down or gets squirrely.

I saw this elicits arguments, and I'm not qualified to argue the point. Perhaps someone knows how this happens based on the kernel's memory management.

[Flash]

All I can say is that I ran Puppy from a multisession DVD for a year, in a computer with 1GB of RAM and no hard disk drive (and therefore no swap memory,) without any problem.

As for ndujoe1's report of flash memory failure, at this point it's a sample of one. Without a postmortem, we can't be sure why it failed.

[Jesse]

Hi,

The "waiting for device to settle before scanning" message happens for any usb-storage device, the 'wait' is over when the matching message "device scan complete" is printed.
So the controller chip on the usb device is talking with the computer.
You might be able to copy the contents of the drive using a commands like "cp /dev/sda /root/sda_copy" but that would be a raw copy of the device media, presumably with filesystem indexing sectors missing, so finding your files would be a tricky & manual process with a hex editor.
You might try mounting the drive in read-only mode. 'mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/removable -t vfat -o ro".

Jesse