I noticed that the FirefoxPortableSettings.ini seems to have the date modified changed every time I launch FirefoxPortable.
Is this correct? Does the launcher write every time?
Does this reduce the life of the flash drive?
Can this be done in such a way as to modify only if the content has changed?
Are there any other files affected in the same manner?
Sorry for so many questions but I had a lot of doubts and wanted to be as clear as possible.
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It's no big deal. This is where Firefox Portable keeps track of where you last run it from. If you run it again from the same place (or another PC that gives the drive the same drive letter), it saves LOTS of writes and improves startup time significantly.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I'm sure the file is very necessary and beneficial.
What I meant was, even if the path did not change, there is a write to the file. i.e. the file is updated with the exact same contents each time.
Would it be wise to store a temp file somewhere on memory and do a comparison before deciding if we need to write to the flash drive? This is in the spirit of reducing flash writes.
I'm not sure how much difference an additional write to the flash drive on every startup will make. However, that's just a thought.
In the course of running, Firefox will perform 1,000s of write operations in an avg session. One tiny write on startup isn't even something to think about... let alone post about.
I already have code to not rewrite it on startup for the next release. But the launcher will still perform a write to the drive on each start to ensure that the profile location is writeable.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hey man, chill. I was just asking if it was worth considering.
I have not performed any measurements on the system and was not aware there were so many writes being performed by firefox. I thought that changes were only made if settings were changed or something. The 1000 writes truly sux.
I guess the 'test write' is to ensure that firefox can have write access for that '1000s of writes'.
I am curious however, if you have a tool to determine the number of writes to a flash device? I am interested in testing the number of writes on other applications.
A write isn't really a write. Confused yet?
Flash RAM can handle a certain number of writes in each location on the drive... and then it begins to wear out. Of course, nearly all flash devices (the new ones anyway) do wear leveling... so even if you change one byte of a file 20 times in a row, it won't write it to the same place each time, it'll move it around. This improves drive life at a small performance hit.
Now, writing a file is actually multiple write operations to multiple locations of a drive. But that 1,000,000 writes number given can be misleading, since it doesn't really translate to writing 1 million files.
So, we do the best we can and kill of the bigger write operations (that's why cache and history are disabled) while still keeping some relatively-heavy ones since the benefit outweighs the cost (like cookies and session saving). There's info on disabling them on the FFP support page, too.
The general rule of thumb is to expect a couple years of use out of a decent flash drive under daily use. Back it up regularly. And, if you have the cash, spring for one of the speedier ones with a lifetime warranty. Because, of course, some drives will die after as little as 6 months. (Hey, it's an electronic device) But don't worry about counting individual writes.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!