Running Linux from USB

[Altis]

So far, I've only tried Ubuntu and Slacko Puppy Linux distros, installing them to USB 2.0 drives.

While Ubuntu worked, it was constantly accessing the USB stick, and it locked up frequently... eventually just died completely.

Slacko Puppy doesn't seem to be the nicest looking distro, but it works very well on USB 2.0. It only accesses the drive every 10 minutes or so. Quite good.

I do this so I can boot to a Windows laptop that is all locked down with an encrypted drive and is too heavily tracked to be able to access non-work email and such (which, oddly enough is required for work).

Anyone else have any experience with running Linux or another OS from a USB drive?  I imagine USB 3.0 would work much better.

[tuxsavvy]

I have ran a few live distros on USB before, I guess more or less the same theory would apply here even when one runs liveCD/liveDVD for that matter. Most of the problem lies in the fact that USBs were notoriously slow (even though it is much more stable than running linux for instance through optical drives and the media itself.

Another problem to think of is the lack of swap space I guess or part thereof under live environment may cause lockups. If it is not the lack of swap space it maybe issues with the hardware that could cause lockups and at that even lockups can occur on proper installations (that is linux was installed on a hard drive rather than some small flash drive).

Ubuntu is not that great of a choice I personally believe, there are a few variants of ubuntu such as kubuntu, lubuntu, xubuntu for instance which I tend to recommend more rather than just ubuntu itself. Heck even linux mint.

For machines with small amounts of RAM (something in the order of maybe 1GB of RAM or less, I would suggest either using a lighter live distribution such as puppy linux and/or setup swap space somewhere (besides on RAM).

[phoenix1234]

So far, I've only tried Ubuntu and Slacko Puppy Linux distros, installing them to USB 2.0 drives.

While Ubuntu worked, it was constantly accessing the USB stick, and it locked up frequently... eventually just died completely.

Slacko Puppy doesn't seem to be the nicest looking distro, but it works very well on USB 2.0. It only accesses the drive every 10 minutes or so. Quite good.

I do this so I can boot to a Windows laptop that is all locked down with an encrypted drive and is too heavily tracked to be able to access non-work email and such (which, oddly enough is required for work).

Anyone else have any experience with running Linux or another OS from a USB drive?  I imagine USB 3.0 would work much better.

Unlike SSD, the life cycle of a normal usb is very short. So, when you want to run on USB drive, the most important thing to do is to reduce the number of writing operations.
First, please use ext2 partition, instead of default ext3 or ext4
Second, please use RAM disk for anything required a high number writing operations like Firefox cache, /tmp etc.
Third, please choose a good USB like Corsair GT, Kingston HyperX ...

Nevertheless, in my experience, no matter what we try to optimize, the USB drive will die sooner or later when it reaches to its physical limit.

[IvanIvanovich]

I've always used light distro like crunchbang, and set to load the entire thing to memory when using live so it's not sluggish using the usb flash drive. Even system that have small memory like 1GB can do it as it is very very light on resources. Another good one, though it is geared towards disk management is partedmagic. It still have basics like a browser and etc and you can choose to load it to memory from the initial boot menu.

[blackbox]

I've always used light distro like crunchbang, and set to load the entire thing to memory when using live so it's not sluggish using the usb flash drive. Even system that have small memory like 1GB can do it as it is very very light on resources. Another good one, though it is geared towards disk management is partedmagic. It still have basics like a browser and etc and you can choose to load it to memory from the initial boot menu.

+1. Have you tried any other distros or thumb drives since you started the tread tuxsavvy?