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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

Got my hands on a Dell Latitude ON module. Turns out it's nothing more than a 2 GB flash module that fits in a mPCIe slot and is wired to the USB lanes. Shows up as /dev/sdb.

I do have a couple of old laptops that don't have a secondary SATA drive slot, but do have open mPCIe slots with USB lanes (no mSATA lanes). The Latitude ON module would allow for a dual drive system, albeit a rather crappy one. What would you put on a secondary internal drive if it were limited to 2 GB and USB protocol?

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[-] henfredemars@lemdro.id 2 points 1 day ago

Back in my day, we had this feature on Windows Vista called ReadyBoost that took advantage of the low-latency of flash media to supplement our slow HDDs. I'm not sure if there was a direct replacement for this in the Linux world. There are filesystems that take advantage of faster tiers of storage, but different latency tier exploitation isn't something that I know to be readily available.

Today, 2GB of USB flash is next to useless, but I would consider a homebrew rescue system to restore your backups and fix problems without needing to prepare an external flash drive.

this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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