Best size USB for test driving Different Linux Distro's
 

Hey I played around with Linux years ago. But never got serious into using it. I ready to make the switch but I want to checkout a for distro's myself. So I was wondering what is the recommended USB drive size that is recommended for test-driving Linux and could I just use the same usb drive and rewrite and distro on it over the last one?

Thanks for the advice!:)

Hi!

4 will do it for most distros. However, there is nothing wrong 8. Please keep in mind your live usb test drive will be heavily affected by the amount of ram. As long ass the stick is good feel free to flash and re-flash a new distro.

A lot of distros are now over 4GB installed, so depending on whether you just want to run 'live' or actually install, 4GB, (1G or 2GB if you have them), to run 'live', (including the possibility to set up 'persistence' with some distros), but 8GB minimum if you intend to install & use it, allowing a couple of GB for your new data, & a 16~32GB will be a usable system disk size.

You'd probably be struggling to buy a USB stick under 8GiB or thereabouts.

Usually, or at least once upon a time when DVD's were still popular, distro developers aimed at not making the ISO any bigger than 4.7GiB - so it would still fit on to a DVD. So with that general "rule of thumb" in mind, then 8GiB should be enough for at least most distro's - certainly for the most popular and mainstream distro's anyway.

Similar advice as others, but ... shouldn't this be intuitive?

I'd think that modern full installs would require about 8G or more. I wouldn't waste my money on anything less.

What I'd look for most is the transfer speed of the usb.

While the live to usb tend to seem fast, a real install to a usb can creep along if you have a very slow usb 2 drive.

There are some very few modern drives that just don't work with a linux filesystem for some reason. Well, they work but not a the high speeds.

Some people use a free virtual machine to test different OS's too. There are quite easy and fast if you have modern systems usually .

32GB sticks are $10-ish at walmart, $15-ish for a 2x pack. 128GB sticks are near $40-ish each. I use 32GB sticks and rarely exceed 16GB in install data. User / game data on the other hand...

plpip,

I would recommend going for a named USB 3.0 drive and avoid the multiple "cheap and nasties" from ebay etc.

Most named drives start at 16GB, such as this SanDisk Ultra of which I have several:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ult.../dp/B00DQG9DDU

A drive like this is often as cheap as an 8GB USB 2.0, only about 5 times faster (in a USB 3.0 port).

USB 3.0 is backward compatible but it would only run at USB 2.0 speed in a USB 2.0 port.

Yes, you can rewrite over previous ISO images.

I've got MX-19 (w/ home persistence) on a 4 GB flash drive. I wouldn't worry much about the size -- as others have pointed out, you'd be lucky to even find something as small as 4 GBs in a store these days. I haven't looked online.

My answer is simple. The bigger the better, especially if you decide later on you want to install an *.iso with persistence.

You can always use multiple sticks with a usb hub. One for $HOME and such. One for $HOME of a specific user and whatnot. Lots of options. With multiple machines you could have $HOME over an NFS share. $HOME only really matters once a user "logs in". Whatever suits your fancy. You don't really need one BIG one. And since linux is files on a filesystem, you could clone your install to another stick at any time. With special attention to /etc/fstab and the bootloader. Lots of options.

I've been using an old 4GB Sandisk Enterprise Edition (it was one of my first flash drive from years ago). I completed removed the security partition from it (it was one of these secure ones that made you enter a password to unlock it) and made it strictly my Linux USB test drive.

If you can get a few smaller (as in storage size) USB sticks for a good price, grab them while you can!
Even if they're slightly more expensive than a single stick with their combined storage volume, it pays when you test drive Linux distros a lot, or permanently keep one with a system rescue distro on it.
Hereabouts, you cannot get anything below 16GB anymore. Maybe very rarely some 8GB sticks.

Bought a 4 pack of 15 gig usb 3 pendrives on the cheap <15 bucks new egg > for persist pen drive installs
I have shoe horned a puppy install on a 128mb SD card once. Came out of a older kodak camera.


https://www.newegg.com/p/0BD-01YT-00...6425-_-Product

Back when I bought mine. The 4 pack was brand name and not as pretty housing

For just checking out an iso 8G
Iso with persistence at least 16G
For a full install at least 32G