Hello. I replaced my HDD with an SSD. I created a bootable flash drive with an NTFS file system. Is that correct? On the HDD, it booted in a few dozen seconds. On the SSD, it booted after about 5 minutes. Ubuntu 24 LTS.

Longines

Unless needed for compatibility, I wouldn't use NTFS, I'd rather VFAT; however, if this is just for Linux, then I would use ext4.

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Okay I get three things from this.
1. you replaced a HDD with an SSD: good.
2. you created a bootable flash drive with NTFS. Why? What for? Does this have ANYTHING to do with the SSD or the machine it is installed on?
3. Returning to the SSD, that machine booted quickly using the HDD but takes 5 minutes wit the SSD.

Why did you create a flash drive using NTFS, and what is that about?
How did you partition the SSD?
Is this a EFI system or BIOS?
What file system(s) did you use for the SSD?

What information you provided seems confusing or confused. You need to make the situation, issues, and goal clear. The only question I see is you asking if it is correct to use NTFS for a flash drive, and without knowing what this flash drive is and what you want to use it for it is unclear how to answer or if that has anything to do with the rest of your post!

Please provide more information and be clear.
In my signature might be a link to the LQ guide on asking questions intelligently, you may want to take a look at that.

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Thanks. I use Rufus to boot from a USB flash drive. There are only two options: NTFS or FAT32.

Longines

Is the USB device then your working drive or do you run in memory treating the USB as immutable?
Because if it is the later case you might do better using a Ventoy device which takes care of all of that for you.
(And supports "persistent mode" if the distribution does.)

Your limit is the limit of what RUFUS can do. Avoiding RUFUS may allow other options.

Generally, and for technical reasons, NTFS is slower to boot non-windows systems. It MAY be slower to boot ALL systems, but Microsoft does not allow Windows on non-Microsoft file systems so it is difficult to tell.
FAT32 has much tighter size and directory limits as compared to NTFS.

If it the case that you never boot form the SSD? If not, why not? If you DO, what do you care about the boot speed of the USB device?

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To answer the question, no it shouldn't take 5 minutes to boot Ubuntu from SSD; should be a minute or less, often much less. How bout share output of "systemd-analyze blame" so we can see what's taking so long.

What is on the SSD, is it just a clone of the HDD? So both the exact same Ubuntu 24.04LTS?

What OS is on the bootable flash drive? Does it boot fast? I personally never heard of anything that uses NTFS besides windows; can't boot dos or linux on NTFS. You can create a dos boot disk that can read NTFS tho.... Regardless, it sounds irrelevant, leave it unplugged.

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What is the "it" you are referring to here? The Ubuntu site recommends balena etcher over rufus although I don't know either would not work. What does creating a bootable usb have to do with the speed with which whatever OS you have on your hard drive/SSD boots?

FAT32 is generally recommended for this purpose. My experience is that the same OS on an SSD will boot 4-5 times faster that one on a SATA drive. I have the same questions as posed in post 3 above.

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For a USB drive used to install an OS to a computer, I recommend Ventoy. You install Ventoy to the USB drive, which formats a very small boot partition, leaving most of the drive empty, formatted as exfat. You can then just do a normal copy of any .iso file or files, as many as will fit on the drive. Boot from the USB drive, and you get a menu to choose which .iso to boot. I keep many .iso files on an external SSD, so I can try out distros (even Windows) and repair installations if necessary. Etcher, Rufus et al are useless for me. If I were going to make just one bootable USB drive for installing the OS, I would use dd. But whatever works for you...

We still don't know exactly what you've done, or were trying to do.

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See my signature in #3 or #5 or this comment for a link on where to get Ventoy.
It is also in some of the Linux repositories for some distributions. (ARCH and Manjaro and other ARCH family distros I believe.)

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+1 for ventoy as a way to format USB drives (which I think uses exfat for the writable partition), but it still won't affect the SSD boot time.

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I'm still not sure what SSD is taking 5 minutes to boot. The filesystem on the drive used to install the OS has nothing at all to do with booting the internal OS drive after installation. I don't completely understand what the issue is.

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Thank You for your advice.
I installed the system using Ventoy. But during installation, I got the message: <system program problem detected>. This is the first time I've seen something like this. But the system installed.

Regards - Longines

Some say ext4. And here you recommend FAT32, so what should it be, Fat32 or ext4?

As I understand rufus basic operation... If the ISO file is a pure ISO hybrid file then rufus should write it bit for bit to the flash drive. The main stream distributions are ISO hybrids but I do not know if every distribution out there does provide a hybrid. A ISO hybrid allows the USB flash drive to boot like a CD/DVD. If not a pure ISO hybrid then rufus determines how to create a bootable USB drive which is where the USB filesystem format is required. I assume that FAT32 would be the safest choice.

Not information as to why the HDD booted faster than the SSD but that should be separate from creating a bootable USB flash drive. With ventoy it should not matter on type of ISO file.

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So here's how: first, I loaded the system as NTFS. Rufus had two options: NTFS and FAT32. I didn't know Ventoy existed. Then I asked on the forum if it was a good idea. It turned out I should have used the ext4 format. As I recall, the HDD files were formatted with Ryfus FAT32. I suspect the long boot time of the SSD was caused by improper drive formatting (NTFS). Now, after loading the system using Ventoy, the computer boots in 40 seconds. A satisfactory result for me. The only thing that's puzzling is the message: <system program problem detected>

Longines