Huge filesystem overhead on USB thumb drive?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 10 April 2006 10:06, Chanchao wrote:
> I have an ext3 filesystem on a partition of a USB thumbdrive. I use
> this to keep my files and settings when booting the live cd.
> (Persistent).
>
> When I boot normally (live cd, not persistent) and right click the
> casper-rw partition and go 'properties', I get around 60 MB total.
>
> However when I check in GParted, I note that almost double that is
> used! Indeed I run out of space (filesystem full) so I had to
> increase the size.
>
> But... Why is there such a huge overhead?  I did do an 'fsck.ext3'
> but it reported no problems.
>
> Anyone know what's going on and how I can get space back? Should I
> be using a different file system?

ext3 seems like overkill on a thumbdrive, you are probably better off 
with ext2 (no journal). The usage pattern on a thumbdrive seldom 
justifies the use of a journal.

The lowest overhead of all is vfat, especially if it's just a bunch of 
data files you are storing and have no pressing need for file 
security.

-- 
If only you and dead people understand hex, 
how many people understand hex?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five