Saving directly to flash drive vs RAM layer

[m1k3]

I'm currently using direct writes to the savefile but I'm wondering if this significantly affects the longevity of the USB flash drive? Are there any benefits to using ram layer with a save interval vs. direct writes?

[bigpup]

Basically that is the biggest benefit.
It limits writes to the USB flash drive.
If you have it set to not save unless you choose to save.
It allows you to install stuff, test it, and decide if you really want it installed.
Also, if you did nothing you really do not want in the save.
Choose not to save to keep it from going into the save.

Life cycle info USB Flash Drives.
http://www.getusb.info/what-is-the-life ... ash-drive/

[m1k3]

Thanks, bigpup. That's what I suspected and I do like the thought of queuing up changes before writing. The only issue I ran into with ram layer in the past is putting the computer to sleep (closing the laptop lid) before I remembered to save. When I did that it seemed to overwrite the memory with the OS state, essentially forgetting my previous changes when I wake the computer back up. It's just something I'll have to keep in mind if using the ram layer unless there is some workaround I'm unaware of.

[jamesbond]

The biggest benefit is writing speed. Writing to USB flash drive is slow. Batching the writes and only do it once a while speeds things up - if you have enough RAM to keep the changes. But you can manually save changes if you have just made large changes.

As @bigpup said, it can also be used to control whether or not you want to save your session.

As for suspend, I never suspend when using RAM layer, so I can't comment on that.
As for USB flash drive longevity, nowadays, I think unless you're using the super duper cheap flash drive, you'd probably outgrow it before it gets damaged.

[m1k3]

As for USB flash drive longevity, nowadays, I think unless you're using the super duper cheap flash drive, you'd probably outgrow it before it gets damaged.

This is good to know!

[fundog]

As for suspend, I never suspend when using RAM layer, so I can't comment on that.
As for USB flash drive longevity, nowadays, I think unless you're using the super duper cheap flash drive, you'd probably outgrow it before it gets damaged.

Hello James, and a big "Thanks" to you and the team through the years for FD64. I searched the thread for an earlier use of the word "suspend" to be sure I understand but... no cigar! I am a simple and happy user and do not have the skills to understand many of the posts here. So, I imagine that my usage is much more simple than many other folks.
That said, I think I can offer a bit of information about the use of "suspend" since I run totally in RAM and I use that command commonly with no known problems.

@mlk3 I am naturally a heavy user of flash drives and I have never known one to age out.

Hope this helps!

[user1111]

Suspend works fine for me when running in ram mode - but I do have a swap partition on hdd that is loaded (encrypted) at startup, so that may have some bearing. Usually suspend - suspends to ram and hibernate uses swap, so suspend conceptually shouldn't require swap, but I guess that if there isn't enough free ram available at the time it may call upon swap in order to successfully 'suspend' and later restore.

[fundog]

@rufwoof
About your conjecture regarding sufficient RAM vs Swap, I would mention that I bought a (now) old Thinkpad X230 with 16GB RAM. That may appear extravagant but I recall in the distant past paying $25MB for RAM. So I happily loaded RAM to the max. I removed the original HD upon arrival and have never used any persistent storage. I did get weary of carrying through security checkpoints so I eventually bought a second very used X230 that had 8GB RAM so I had one wherever I was. I left the RAM at 8 and have had no problems running in RAM either.
Hope this helps!