question on formating USB Drive in Kubuntu

[Derek Broughton]

James Gray wrote:

> Daniel Pittman wrote:
>> "Jonathan Jesse" <jjesse at iserv.net> writes:
>> 
>>> I have an 120 gig USB 
>>> 2.0 drive that is currently formatted in NTFS.  How do delete
>>> everything that is on it and format it to ext3 or a better filesystem
>>> for running such a large USB drive on?
>> 
>> Well, pretty easily:
>> 
>>   sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdXXX  # replace XXX with your device node
> 
> I'd caution against using a journaling file system
> (ext3/reiserfs/jfs/xfs) on a USB drive as these formats tend to require
> a bit more I/O bandwidth than their non-journaling cousins
> (ext3/vfat/etc).  When you're operating on a bandwidth-challenged bus
> (like USB) the difference between journaling and not-journaling can be
> quite noticeable.
> 
> If you REALLY need the journal, then by all means use it...but be aware
> of the overheads.

I'm afraid I just treat journalling as a black box, but is it not actually
possible to put the journal on a different device?  That would seem to be a
win/win - with the caveat that remounting that device on another system
could then get _really_ ugly.
-- 
derek