Uses for SPI Flash

[Arwen]

One thing to know is that some types of builtin flash have limited re-write life span.
Like 1,000 or 10,000 re-writes. Perfectly fine for storing boot code, and even boot
parameters. But, anything that may need an update every boot may wear it out too
soon. (Not saying your use needs updates every boot... I don't know your use case.)

Understand, some of these flash devices are NOT like an SSD. SSDs have spares, wear
leveling, error detection and minimal correction. And may have things like RAM buffers
or TRIM support.

Some of these flash devices the way you detect bad blocks, is you write data and if it
reads back as different, block is bad. No spares. Time to replace.

All that said, I don't know if the Pinebook Pro's 128M(b/B?) SPI flash is user replacable.
Or of what type.

Thanks, that's a good point to make. I'm mostly interested in potentially storing my GPG and SSH keys there - write once, read every time I reinstall the OS, just to make it easier to rapidly run through operating systems, and because I think it would be cool. I could just use a USB key though, maybe I should do that.

Another way to deal with it, is to have a master copy of your home directory. (Or what you want in your home directory.) I have such for my ~/bin/, ~/help/, ~/.ssh/ & ~/.gnupg/ directories. For me, I have a home media server that I use as the base point for those directories. Then have a script in ~/bin/ to perform an Rsync update when needed for my current desktop and laptop.

(My ~/help/ is for rarely used detail to do things, even esoteric things, kind of like a recipe.)