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NeoGeo64
Premium Member
join:2001-09-22
Leesburg, GA

NeoGeo64

Premium Member

Is it a bad idea to...

Is it a bad idea to run Linux from a USB drive for long periods of time, or even permanently? I have had a few people tell me that it's not a very good idea to run Linux like this.

What are your thoughts?

Exodus
Your Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth

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Exodus

Premium Member

You do what you want, but you're looking at running much slower than a traditional drive or even a solid state drive, and you're probably limited in the amount of I/O you can handle on a USB drive, even at 3.0.

You probably don't want to do anything mission critical on it either. Is there a reason why you don't want to slap it on a regular drive?

NeoGeo64
Premium Member
join:2001-09-22
Leesburg, GA

1 recommendation

NeoGeo64

Premium Member

It's been such a long time since I did a hard drive install for Linux... I did download a partition utility for Windows last night... its called MiniTool Partition Manager or something like that.

My question would be this, then: If I just make one big empty 200GB partition (I have a 1TB drive) and boot into Mint, would I just be able to tell Mint to install onto that empty partition and make the swap partition and all the other partitions (there's like 3 or 4 partitions that most Linux distros need... I think, from what I remember)? Will Mint Linux just take that free partition and do it's thing without need for my input, is my question. I'm just worried I'll hose my Windows 7 partition and really be stuck using USB Linux Mint just to recover my data :P

P.S. When I told Partition Manager to make the new partition, by resizing my Windows 7 partition it informed me that drive C:/ is in use and the PC will need to reboot in order to make the changes. How long will it take to resize the current partition and create a new, 200GB partition? I have a 3.4GHz i7, 4th gen & 8GB RAM.

graysonf
MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL

graysonf

MVM

You can skip the Minitool step and don't bother creating that 200GB partition that involves resizing your existing drive. Linux Mint is capable of doing that for you during its install.

Just be sure you pay attention to what you are doing and make the correct choices. If you chose wrong, you will erase your entire current drive instead of resizing it. You should also have a full backup of your existing drive stored somewhere else just in case something goes wrong.

leibold
MVM
join:2002-07-09
Sunnyvale, CA
Netgear CG3000DCR
ZyXEL P-663HN-51

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said by NeoGeo64:

Is it a bad idea to run Linux from a USB drive for long periods of time, or even permanently?

It is not Linux specific but generally a bad idea to install a general purpose operating system onto media with a limited number of update cycles such as eeprom or flash memory. The reason is that those operating systems maintain a lot of files that are frequently being updated which will sooner or later exhaust the number of times a particular block can be overwritten and results in media errors.
This is not an issue with Linux live distributions that are designed to run from CD / DVD media since the OS partition is mounted read-only and no updates on the media are performed.
intok (banned)
join:2012-03-15

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said by NeoGeo64:

Is it a bad idea to run Linux from a USB drive for long periods of time, or even permanently? I have had a few people tell me that it's not a very good idea to run Linux like this.

What are your thoughts?

In general yes, especially if you have a swap file and /tmp on the flash.

USB flash is not the same stuff as SSD drives, it wears out much faster with the number of writes.

I say this having killed a few USB sticks and SD cards using them this way. They usually lasted 1-3 months depending on size of the chip and how heavy the workload.

That said, making bootable image versions of them to run the install wont hurt them unless you sit in the live environment for a few days.

mackey
Premium Member
join:2007-08-20

mackey

Premium Member

said by intok:

I say this having killed a few USB sticks and SD cards using them this way. They usually lasted 1-3 months depending on size of the chip and how heavy the workload.

The last time I tried I got 6 months before it died, using ext2 and -o noatime.

/M

Selenia
Gentoo Convert
Premium Member
join:2006-09-22
Fort Smith, AR

Selenia to NeoGeo64

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I did run a PC with a flash drive and 2 external HDDs on separate usb hubs. Ran it for over a year. Did the usual noatime flag. Did /tmp and /var/tmp as tmpfs. Mounted flash drive as / One partition on an HDD as swap the other HDD contained the /var directory and /home. Rest of other HDD was storage. Was pretty zippy distributing the workload that way too. Why? The HDD blew(just past warranty) and that PC was not worth a new one and the work involved(very poorly designed) in removing it. I wanted to get just a bit more out of it, so I made that little concoction of a flash drive and USB HDDs I almost never used. Flash stick was only written for changes in /etc files and the newly extracted system updates(tmpfs and HDDs handled actual extraction). So you can do it and booting off a flash drive is much faster than an external HDD, but write speed and life is terrible on a flash drive, hence my layout involving the external HDDs besides for storage.

nunya
LXI 483
MVM
join:2000-12-23
O Fallon, MO

1 recommendation

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IDK, but I've been running FreeNAS from a thumb drive for a long time (FreeBSD). In fairness, I think most of the action takes place in RAM.

journeysquid
join:2014-08-01

journeysquid

Member

said by nunya:

IDK, but I've been running FreeNAS from a thumb drive for a long time (FreeBSD). In fairness, I think most of the action takes place in RAM.

FreeNAS is pretty smart about minimizing writes to the OS area (other than logs). Running it off an easily-swapped flash drive with disks solely for storage is a pretty common use case.

Selenia
Gentoo Convert
Premium Member
join:2006-09-22
Fort Smith, AR

Selenia

Premium Member

As I was saying, Linux can be pretty minimal about writes too. Just put /tmp and /var on a real disk with noatime flag, though I chose tmpfs for /tmp and /var/tmp in RAM for speed since /tmp and /var/tmp need not be persistent. Linux is, in fact run on routers with limited write flash memory. Only time I hear of those burning up is by overclocking or outright overloading thee system constantly(both can cause overheating). Live distros reduce it further by writing to RAM. Of course the drawback is nothing sticks upon reboot.
slopoke
join:2012-05-20
London, OH

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I heard that also but I've been running Zorin Core 6 with 2G persistence for a couple years on a 16G PNY. As long as I don't update or add too much other junk it keeps working. I just use it on the road (ie library) mostly to use the web or edit text. I set cache limits in browser, no history (use sync), and limit cookies. (less write/rewrite). Just my idea but I'm not 'expertly'.