 Solution

Reusing a block-oriented file system preserves existing operating-system interfaces, tools, consistency procedures and on-disk formats. It also permits common buffering and caching policies. Large transfers can still amortize software and controller overhead, and flash memory itself has page-program and erase-block constraints, so a block device abstraction is often useful even without mechanical motion.

The costs are that a fine-grained change may require reading and rewriting a larger logical block, and a small computer file can waste part of its final file data block. Structures optimized to reduce seek time need not be best for non-volatile memory. For flash memory, repeated metadata updates and erasing or relocating larger regions can increase physical writes and consume finite program/erase endurance. A translation layer can hide these constraints but adds mapping space and work.

ConsequentlyThe balance depends on the actual medium: byte-addressable non-volatile memory and page/erase-based flash memory have different physical constraints.