> is there a way to move my existing swap partition to a 4 gig USB flash > drive. on a working Debian Etch system, witout having to reinstall the > whole works? i'm told the usb swap file will be much faster ... almost > like having it in ram. USB flash is not as fast as ram. It's read speed might compare to hard drives, but it's write speed is often slower. Sometimes much slower. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/flash2005.ars/9 However, flash memory should have less latency than a mechanical drive. This could make it faster for some applications, especially read-only scenarios that involve lots of random access to small files. I don't think it would work well for swap, but it might be good for storing /boot, /lib, and /etc. If you want to avoid USB, you can buy adapters that connect compact flash card directly to IDE - it's essentially the same interface. Jeremy