Greetings:

Correct me if I am wrong, but a few months ago I think I read
something about a thread in Port-i386, that there were some issues
regarding connecting a USB drive lot after boot, since the kernel
had difficulty allocating a contineous (non-fragmented) block of
memory for the disk device.  This was not an issue for devices
inserted during or just after booting, since the memory space
has not been fragmented yet by userspace applications.

My question is, has this been fixed, and if so, in which source
trees (1.6X and/or 2.0X)?  If not, an easy solution would be a
kernel config option that would allow one to "pre-allocate"
memory blocks for 1-8 USB drives during boot, and whenever a USB
drive is connected, it would use one of the available "pre-
allocated" memory blocks and release it when it is disconnected.
After which another drive can use the same "pre-allocate" block
when it is connected.  The kernel option for this would be similar
to the "ppp" option where one specifies the number of simultaneous
ppp sessions.

The reason why, is that I need transfer many GB of backup copies
of logs from one running server (that is never shut down) to
another (archiving server), and tape is just too slow, and DVD
burning not practical on a busy server machine that needs to run
24/7 without interruption.

So I considered using one of these USB-IDE rack units from ViPower,
and just popping in a large (> 200GB) drive in a tray, into the USB-
IDE rack, mounting it, copying the logs, unmounting it, and then
insert it into the archive machine.

What do you think?  Has the USB drive issue been resolved to the
point that I can mount & unmount a single USB drive every day
for a year on a busy server machine without every rebooting it?

Thanks in advance.
Alicia.