Can I use Linux on an external, portable, USB, hard-drive?
Linux - GeneralThis Linux forum is for general Linux questions and discussion.
If it is Linux Related and doesn't seem to fit in any other forum then this is the place.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Can I use Linux on an external, portable, USB, hard-drive?
Greetings,
I had the idea of installing a Linux (or BSD) distro to an external, portable, USB hard-drive and then plug it into a pc and use the external hard-drive with OS as the pc's OS. Will this work? I have never tried this before. If it does work, is there any special way I would have to set this all up, configure everything and then use it, or would it pretty much be a simple and easy "plug-and-play" affair?
I had the idea of installing a Linux (or BSD) distro to an external, portable, USB hard-drive and then plug it into a pc and use the external hard-drive with OS as the pc's OS. Will this work? I have never tried this before. If it does work, is there any special way I would have to set this all up, configure everything and then use it, or would it pretty much be a simple and easy "plug-and-play" affair?
Thanks
Install should be the same as if it were going on an internal drive. If you want to boot your distro on any machine, make sure to put the bootloader on that external drive also, and use UUID instead of /dev/sdxX.
To most modern linux/bsd a usb drive is the same as an internal drive. While I'll agree that usually a live to usb app creates a slightly faster install I prefer to use a real install. The live to usb tend to save a compressed filesystem. A new fast usb is plenty good for most uses. A fast usb 3.0 with supported OS is really nice.
In a odd twist, the newest linux tried to add in some features and got complex in respect to video drivers. It is possible to disable those features but you may not get full video ability.
If you were to just use this usb on a single machine you could fine tune it for it's hardware.
Distribution: Ubuntu 11.4,DD-WRT micro plus ssh,lfs-6.6,Fedora 15,Fedora 16
Posts: 3,233
Rep:
a few caveats would be that USB is inherently slower than even IDE let alone SATA, though not necessarily a problem with simply booting an OS, it can be really apparent when doing something more intensive such as swapping onto a USB drive.
secondly, if this is a hard drive, than it shouldn't be any different than an internal hard drive (assuming the BIOS supports booting from a USB device, though this is pretty much standard in modern units), if it is a flash device though, you have to remember that flash devices wear out faster than hard drives with heavy use
either way you may want to use a bootloader/filesystem better suited for USB drives rather than the standard, but the standard should work just fine, albeit perhaps not as optimally as it could.
USB 2.0 is reasonably fast; FireWire is much faster. Many computers have the ability to run FW800 or better, and disk enclosures can support both. (Some enclosures also provide ESATA.)
I use external drives for a variety of things, including the system-volumes of virtual Linux machines. And, to my way of thinking, "virtual is the only sensible way to go" these days. Leave the host, whatever it is, entirely alone, and run VMs. Intel microprocessors now have very sophisticated support for virtualization in hardware. When you point a VM at a fast external drive, you don't have to do anything to the host ... which is usually a good thing.
USB 2.0? Firewire? What is this, 2008? Firewire is long since dead and USB 3.0 has been integrated into the motherboard of basically every system sold in the last 2-3 years. USB 3.0 is significantly faster than Firewire, IDE, SATA I, and SATA II, the only thing faster is SATA III, and SSDs are the only devices capable of saturating that bus.
I dare you to find a practical difference in usage speed between a drive (even an SSD in anything other than sequential benchmarks) on SATA vs USB 3.0.
Distribution: Ubuntu 11.4,DD-WRT micro plus ssh,lfs-6.6,Fedora 15,Fedora 16
Posts: 3,233
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by sundialsvcs
USB 2.0 is reasonably fast; FireWire is much faster. Many computers have the ability to run FW800 or better, and disk enclosures can support both. (Some enclosures also provide ESATA.)
reasonably fast for normal operation such as web browsing, watching videos etc.. though the boot process will be noticibly slower (though not unreasonably so). the real bottle neck is putting swap space on the USB drive, since swapping is slow even with a SATA drive, you'd have to be a massochist to use swap space on a USB2 drive.
if you are planning on using this on one (and only one) machine you could just install the os to the usb drive (and install the wifi/sound card/graphics adapter/... drivers for that particular system). it should be the exact same process as installing to any other harddrive.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.