this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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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) (18 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] 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.

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