Treatise on Formatting FLASH Storage Devices

[Bobby Powers]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 4:11 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
<bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> This gives us Linux users a bit of a dilemma if we want to use FTL flash
> for primary storage.  FAT does not provide the file access permissions,
> symlinks, hardlinks, or even case sensitivity, that we desire for most
> filesystems on unixy systems.  However, FTL devices behave as a sort of
> FAT-oriented black box, full of secret proprietary firmware that loves
> FAT.  One obvious proposal, therefore, would be to use FAT for storage,
> but wrap it with a layer that implements all our favorite POSIX stuff.

What about a small script that could do two things:
- determine and dump the factory partitioning data from a device (by
looking at how the FAT filesystem is laid out) to a file (perhaps we
could build up a database for popular FLASH devices, like the SanDisk
Ultra III's?)
- take the factory partitioning data from a device (or dump file) and
create a new partition map and well behaved ext2/3/4/whatever file
system on the device

I'm quite new to this wide world of filesystems and block devices, so
let me know if there are clear or obvious reasons this can't be done,
or why it would be harder than it sounds.

Bobby