Long story short, I had a laptop with a standard hard drive running Arch, and the HDD died. I use my laptop a lot for basic web browsing, so I looked to alternative install methods to make use of it until I could replace the drive. I started out with a basic LiveCD from Linux Mint, but was annoyed with much of the system being read-only, and switched to a standard Arch install onto an 8GB flash drive of mine. It's speedy to read, but extremely slow for anything else. I expected as much, but not to this extent. So, now I'm looking for another alternative.

Basically, I'd like to have an install that behaves as similarly as possible to a traditional HDD install, but is able to run off a USB stick (or even a CD/DVD). I'm EXTREMELY unfamiliar with this sort of setup, since I've always had a hard drive to work with. So, I'm open to any and all suggestions, and any criticism that states I'm expecting too much. I'm most comfortable with Arch Linux, but I've used Debian/Ubuntu extensively in the past, and would be fine with switching to that or another style of distro (always open to learning a new flavour of Linux :-)

Any suggestions for someone who owns a laptop without a hard drive, and who likely will not have access to one for a while? If it helps, I do have a desktop with NFS up and running for network storage. IO speed isn't necessarily an issue, unless it's extremely slow (like with my current USB stick setup), or requires extensive workarounds (like with the everyday LiveCD).

I'm going to say

BrowserLinux (Puppy based)
http://www.browserlinux.com/

Porteus (Slackware Based)
http://porteus.org/

Almost all common linux installs correctly to a usb flash or external. You just boot to the cd and install the the usb (since your hard drive is bad).

You can go to pendrivelinux.com for more ways if you want.

A few live cd's run off a cd-rw or use usb flash or floppy to save data.



netboot.me

Lots of holiday/end-of-year sales and hard drives are cheap.

USB flash storage can't even come close in speed to a good internal hard drive.

But, if your budget is zero, the next best choice is what's called "persistent live USB". Most distros have a utility to set this up automatically for you, or you can visit http://pendrivelinux.com for a third-party solution.

Persistent live is faster than full install because there are fewer writes to the device (and as you discovered, writes are much slower than reads).

Hi,
I would suggest a SSD since retail SATA internal & external are costly at this point in time. Artificially high now, mostly due to flooding in Taiwan. You can purchase a Intel 40GB SSD for under $100. As compared to a new mechanical holding there prices high. We should see some slipping of the prices in the not to distant future. Likely mid 1st quarter.

Of course, it could also be a marketing strategy to force people to adopt SSDs.

I recommend an external HDD or SSD over any USB stick.

Hi,

I think the problem is two fold. Not just Taiwan but Thailand have recent flooding that have caused the shortages and production interruption(s). Problem is to big to be a 'marketing strategy', if in deed a man created problem then the managers are genius' at manipulation.