I’ve been using some cheap flash drives for things like installing OSs and the like, but now I’ve picked up a Dell Wyse 3040 system to play with which only has 8gb of storage. So I’m installing the OS onto a flash drive permanently (don’t worry, just for messing with, nothing of value will be lost if/when the drive craps out).
However, the performance of my cheap flash drive is terrible and installing packages & transferring files is so slow. My question is: Would getting a better drive make a meaningful difference here? If so, anyone have some recommendations of drives they like that are fast?
For running an OS off a USB drive, I would recommend getting a USB to M.2 enclosure and putting an M.2 drive in it. This will give you better performance than any flash drive out there. The memory they put into normal flash drives is just slow slow slow for the use case of an OS.
M.2 Enclosure
M.2 Drive to go in it
Now, the only negative there is that is kinda expensive. If you really want to stick to a normal USB drive, maybe try this one out. But I would really like to stress that running an OS off a normal USB drive is going to be slow.
You likely won’t notice much of a difference between SATA and NVMe when using the drive via USB, and many people have spare SATA SSDs, so I’d just grab a USB to 2.5" SATA cable: https://a.co/d/dQ5QXR1. You don’t need an enclosure because the drive itself is already an enclosure.
Don’t pay almost $20 for just a cable, pay $3 for this. it’s an enclosure you can put your 2.5in sata drive in to connect it with usb3. I have several, work like a charm https://a.co/d/8Z2VPso
Up to you… $20 isn’t much and StarTech is a trusted brand, so it was worth it for me. I don’t trust the cheap generic brands on Amazon as much.
Fair point. I rolled the dice and have been happy with this one, but you’re right on both accounts. StarTech is a trusted brand and $20 is pretty affordable.
USB SATA controllers are also very hit-and-miss. There’s plenty of really, really bad ones out there. Either missing features, slow, getting hot or all of the above. If you found one that works well, good for you, but I’d avoid most noname brands, unless I had specific knowledge about the product or the very least the chipset they use.
I have bought 2 sata to USB adapters…they look identical ( other than expensive one has slightly heavier cord ) one for $4 one for $20. The $4 one has the blue USB 3 look to it, but it doesn’t transfer as fast as the real USB 3 cord that cost $20.
Wow, I never considered using an M2 as an external. So obvious - I’ve used SSD externals for years.
Brilliant!
The M.2 enclosure I have gets extremely hot during periods of extended use like installing an OS or transferring large amounts of data. Not sure if it’s a problem with other enclosures, but it’s something to consider.
Check the chipset maker. If it’s JMicro that’s the problem, they suck. Look for something with Realtek or Asmedia chipset.
That may also be a problem, but these external enclosures need heat management. It can be passive, but they definitely need to handle heat, whatever the chipmaker for the actual drive.
You mean the SSD chipset, or the does the enclosure have a chipset, too?
The enclosure chipset.
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Yeah, I have one of those and it’s great but I need very little storage for this system (64g max) so I didn’t feel like it made sense in this case.
You could go with a 2.5in SSD in a USB enclosure. I think OP was just suggesting this as the highest performance option.
You won’t see much of a difference between SATA and NVMe (if at all) as the maximum speed for SATA (6Gbps) is higher than the maximum speed for USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gbps).
Not disagreeing, because you’re right that the differences you’d see are minimal, but did want to add that latency & random I/o is better on most nvme than most SATA SSD. And that would be somewhat beneficial for an OS drive in my opinion. But the difference would probably not be noticeable, as you said.
I have an external drive like this. I just
dd’d the entire contents of my system drive, since the external is larger. Boots on other EFI systems with no other changes, and I get ~700mb/sec actual.