I’ve been using my Asus EEE PC for number of months now. I have chose Mandriva and Ubuntu as my two Linux distributions of choice on the EEE PC. In this time, I’ve had ample time to play with both the EXT3 and EXT2 file systems. It’s generally recommended not to use the EXT3 file system on solid-state drives. The the EXT3 file system has a much greater rate of disk read/writes than EXT2. Keeping read/writes down on a solid-state drive is essential in maintaining the drives integrity/longevity. Currently the lifespan of these new types of drives are unknown in the long term.
However, my experience in using EXT2 is as follows:
Nothing but problems…unrecoverable drive errors that not even fsck can fix. A full format/wipe/reinstall is needed - not a fun task 11:00PM the night before you have a meeting first thing in the morning.
When using the EXT2 file system and things are “working correctly” the responsiveness compared to EXT3 is more delayed and sometimes freezes the system altogether. I now use the to use EXT3 file system exclusively on the Asus EEE PC. The life may be decreased on the solid-state drive - but what good is a slow and unresponsive system? It’s unusable! I normally upgrade to a new notebook every year - if my little EEE PC fails I’ll upgrade to a new model or buy a replacement solid-state drive. In this case, quality of usage is more important than longevity of usage.
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