Hey I have an old dell d430 which I wanna repurpose to a small fileserver and subsonic streaming station. However, the hard disk drive is temperamental and botting up from the HHD is slow and inconsistent. There are a lot of wonderful (and easy guides) about how to install linux to a flashdrive using tools like YUMI, but the issue is that they are live systems. All the settings are changed upon reboot.


My Question is :

How does one install linux onto a flashdrive connected to a computer, and set the computer to boot from it, with linux treating the flash drive as the normal boot HDD ?

EDIT : Would it be possible for Linux Mint 14 ? [XFCE] ? Would a Sandisk Cruzer fit be alright for it ? http://www.sandisk.com.au/assets/pro...dcz33-032g.jpg

Just boot from the install disk (have the Flash drive plugged in before starting the computer to be sure) and install it to the Flash device, it will be treated as normal harddisk from the installer. Make sure that you install the bootloader to the Flash drive. No special options or something needed. I personally wouldn't choose Mint for a server, but that is of course up to you.

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Having done several full installs to USB flash drives, I find that bootloader installation often does not work as it should. When that happens, instead of messing around with grub, I just install extlinux.

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Im a sucker for GUIs, so I want something I can Remote connect to with a graphical user interface.



Im only a linux beginner, ive messed around with grub a few times, are there any good guides about how to customize and intall extlinux to boot the system of a flash drive (made for a relative beginner in mind) ?

Flash drive installs are kind of slow so don't count of much of a fast system.

I like to use virtual machines for creating usb flash drive installs. You can use your current system but I suggest that you remove power to internal HD. Be sure to boot to bios and make sure that the USB is the current hard drive. If your computer is too old then you may have to fool with plop or cd boots to get past the old hardware.

For some reason dual posts happened.

Hard drives are super-cheap and will give much better performance than a USB thumb drive.

Before I learned about Debian Live, I tried intalling it to a flash drive to take with me to use on the PCs at work. It was nothing but trouble. The filesystem was never unmounted properly and nearly always led to corrupted data. If you're going to insist on installing to a flash drive, go with a live image and persistence, not a full install.

The thing is, with the dell D430, it uses a ZIF drive and its connected to the mainboard using a proprietary connection. The mainboard end of the connection is loose and tempremental, thus making use of any HDD difficult.

I've had more problems with corruption of the persistence file associated with the live image than I have with full installs. Snowpine probably has the right idea

Hard drives are cheap, but proprietary connections are expensive. Is my best option really to get a new hard disk drive and cable ?

I made my recommendation not knowing all the facts about your connector. You'll have to weigh the pros and cons.

So, running linux off a flash drive is not a feasable proposition ?

A couple of people have told you it is totally feasable, and explained how to do it.

Ill mess about and will post the details later.