On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Eric Persson <eric AT persson DOT tm> wrote:

dan wrote:
> If you are using EXT3 or XFS then I suggest you use an external journal.
> get yourself a small SSD or a small 15RPM disk.  You could use a regular
> disk if you like but the faster the better.

This would work with a fast usbstick as well? With quite good results I
expect, and not much problems if it wears out, and perhaps cheaper than
a ssd. Or could I put in 4 usbsticks and create a raidset from it, and
store the journal on there? ;) Perhaps stupid, but worth a shot. Depends
on what you're using the backupserver for i guess. SSD is probably more
reliable for a bigger shop.

USB is the weak spot here.  You want something on SATA (or IDE, SCSI).  You could certainly try it but USB is pretty weak on IO performance so I wouldn't know if it would help performance or not.   Try to raid up a few sticks BUT make use you put them on different controllers.  A modern USB flash drive will see a USB bus speedlimit if you put two devices on 1 bus.