Treatise on Formatting FLASH Storage Devices

[Mitch Bradley]

>
>> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_Damage_a_FLASH_Storage_Device
>> > 
>> > Read it and weep.
>>     
>
> It's a great article, but people that aren't very familiar with
> filesystems and the filesystem tools are going to read the article, look
> at their tools, scratch their heads, decide the whole thing is too hard,
> and go on making the same mistakes. It would be useful if actual command
> arguments could be given for various sane defaults.

Indeed, I'd like to do that as time permits.  It's sort of an open-ended 
proposition though, because there are so many possibilities.  Deciding 
where to draw the line is tricky.  And for each example, to do it right, 
I'll have to write a mini-treatise on the pertinent assumptions and 
limitations.

For me, the hard thing about writing is finding an appropriate stopping 
point - i.e. there is always more that could be said.  So I tend to 
avoid starting, because I know that the task will grow to fill all 
available time and then some.

For starters, I wanted to lay out the issues and the theory, so at least 
people start to realize that there is a possible problem.  From what 
I've seen, most people are currently totally unaware of it.

At least I did give one concrete recommendation - avoid reformatting if 
you can.