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Looking for the Perfect USB Flash Drive (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been using some cheap flash drives for things like installing OSs and the like, but now I've picked up a Dell Wyse 3040 system to play with which only has 8gb of storage. So I'm installing the OS onto a flash drive permanently (don't worry, just for messing with, nothing of value will be lost if/when the drive craps out).

However, the performance of my cheap flash drive is terrible and installing packages & transferring files is so slow. My question is: Would getting a better drive make a meaningful difference here? If so, anyone have some recommendations of drives they like that are fast?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

For running an OS off a USB drive, I would recommend getting a USB to M.2 enclosure and putting an M.2 drive in it. This will give you better performance than any flash drive out there. The memory they put into normal flash drives is just slow slow slow for the use case of an OS.

M.2 Enclosure

M.2 Drive to go in it

Now, the only negative there is that is kinda expensive. If you really want to stick to a normal USB drive, maybe try this one out. But I would really like to stress that running an OS off a normal USB drive is going to be slow.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You likely won't notice much of a difference between SATA and NVMe when using the drive via USB, and many people have spare SATA SSDs, so I'd just grab a USB to 2.5" SATA cable: https://a.co/d/dQ5QXR1. You don't need an enclosure because the drive itself is already an enclosure.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Don't pay almost $20 for just a cable, pay $3 for this. it's an enclosure you can put your 2.5in sata drive in to connect it with usb3. I have several, work like a charm https://a.co/d/8Z2VPso

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Up to you... $20 isn't much and StarTech is a trusted brand, so it was worth it for me. I don't trust the cheap generic brands on Amazon as much.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Fair point. I rolled the dice and have been happy with this one, but you're right on both accounts. StarTech is a trusted brand and $20 is pretty affordable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I have bought 2 sata to USB adapters...they look identical ( other than expensive one has slightly heavier cord ) one for $4 one for $20. The $4 one has the blue USB 3 look to it, but it doesn't transfer as fast as the real USB 3 cord that cost $20.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

USB SATA controllers are also very hit-and-miss. There's plenty of really, really bad ones out there. Either missing features, slow, getting hot or all of the above. If you found one that works well, good for you, but I'd avoid most noname brands, unless I had specific knowledge about the product or the very least the chipset they use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Wow, I never considered using an M2 as an external. So obvious - I've used SSD externals for years.

Brilliant!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I have one of those and it's great but I need very little storage for this system (64g max) so I didn't feel like it made sense in this case.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You could go with a 2.5in SSD in a USB enclosure. I think OP was just suggesting this as the highest performance option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You won't see much of a difference between SATA and NVMe (if at all) as the maximum speed for SATA (6Gbps) is higher than the maximum speed for USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gbps).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Not disagreeing, because you're right that the differences you'd see are minimal, but did want to add that latency & random I/o is better on most nvme than most SATA SSD. And that would be somewhat beneficial for an OS drive in my opinion. But the difference would probably not be noticeable, as you said.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The M.2 enclosure I have gets extremely hot during periods of extended use like installing an OS or transferring large amounts of data. Not sure if it’s a problem with other enclosures, but it’s something to consider.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Check the chipset maker. If it's JMicro that's the problem, they suck. Look for something with Realtek or Asmedia chipset.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You mean the SSD chipset, or the does the enclosure have a chipset, too?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

The enclosure chipset.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

That may also be a problem, but these external enclosures need heat management. It can be passive, but they definitely need to handle heat, whatever the chipmaker for the actual drive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I have an external drive like this. I just dd'd the entire contents of my system drive, since the external is larger. Boots on other EFI systems with no other changes, and I get ~700mb/sec actual.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

As a general purpose USB (which not only works great for daily use as a thumb drive but also works with no issues as Linux Live or persistent USB) I can recommend the Sandisk Ultra line. I had them everywhere from 16GB to 128GB. They never let me down. The housing might look like it's made from flimsy plastic but it's surprising sturdy.

A second drive I'm currently preparing for use as a persistent Linux drive is the Samsung portable SSD T7. It's nice and sturdy and the USB C to USB C interface allows me to easily run it on my Laptop without using up any of my precious USB A ports.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yeah seems like sandisk ultra is the way to go. Do you know, is there any disadvantage to using the "Ultra Fit" line of smaller drives that sit much more flush to the case? Those look nice, but IDK if there are performance issues with the smaller package

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

No I haven't tested them yet. However something I do notice is that people tend to forget the small drives much more often. Simply because of the form factor.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I think the ultra fit uses some other piece of flash, I'd just recommend the plain Ultra or the Luxe. They pretty much have the same chip inside iirc

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

Here is one ultra sandisk for $12 per 256gb https://wwamazon.com/dp/B07SYRW97F/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Yes, getting a better flash drive will get you better performance. Make sure you get a good USB 3 drive, and plug it into a USB 3 port. I’ve always had good experiences with SanDisk drives. Avoid the off brand drives. They’re often really bad or even fake.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

There are some fancy ones with SSD-features like wear leveling, though i don't know which.

But why not a NVME USB enclosure?

Thumbdrive as main disk does work, but once i trashed a SD-card-as-home with compiling something, i gave up on the idea.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Do you have a spare SATA SSD? This is my go-to USB cable for connecting SATA SSDs via USB: https://a.co/d/dQ5QXR1. Works well on Raspberry Pi and it'd work well on a thin client too.

Note that the Wyse systems don't have much CPU power as they're designed to be used as thin clients (where nothing runs on the system other than remote desktop connecting to a server somewhere). That's why they have so little space - they were never designed to run a full OS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
NVMe	Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
SATA	Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
SSD	Solid State Drive mass storage

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.

[Thread #670 for this sub, first seen 9th Apr 2024, 19:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You can always grab a USB 3.0 disk case + NVME drive or 2.5 SSD, those will give you better performance for sure. Don't buy pre-made drives, they're usually slower than just getting a case and picking a desktop drive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if you can replace the storage element with something bigger. It might be a data drive or an M.2 drive. You could replace either with a bigger device.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, sadly it does have a M.2 slot but it's not SATA or NVMe, but instead SDIO. Someone out there has actually made an adapter that lets you put an sd card into that slot, which is super cool. But probably no better that a flash drive realistically, and much more expensive (you have to get the adapter manufactured)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Well, at least it has a USB3 slot - you could put a NVME drive in a USB3 external case and boot that way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

SanDisk usb-keys work.

You really want to use the thing for read-only, though, if you can:

the writes it takes to kill some portion of a filesystem, vs the writes you get before corrupting things, on a USB driver, don't line-up.

Use NVMe as your 1st-choice for storage ( future purchases, obviously ), the fastest you can get, and be stunned by how much faster the same motherboard is, with superfast OS storage..

I'd stick /home, not /usr, on the USB.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm curious, the current flash drive you are using... does it allow paging files? I would figure flash media would be marked portable to the OS and not allow page files to be used.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

How would I check that?