[TriLUG] booting off usbstick

[Pete Soper via TriLUG]

I second that emotion. How good is the wear leveling in a USB stick? My 
guess is they are designed to be used a bit but the expectation is close 
to write-once. However a rotating disk with a USB interface is cheap as 
dirt these days. If the motherboard is recent with USB3 performance 
won't be an issue either. A policy for spinning it down once a day  may 
be the way to go. My previous network storage server used this approach 
and ran 24/7/365 for six years (is still a "hot spare" in case the new 
server flakes out).

-Pete

On 7/11/20 10:53 AM, Cristóbal Palmer via TriLUG wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 4:56 PM Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG
> <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>> I want to boot off a usb stick on a usb connector internal to a computer, so I
>> can use all the drive bays for storage.
> I think the second half of this sentence is the most important: you
> want to use all the drive bays for storage. It only follows that you
> want to use the USB stick if your motherboard limits you to that as a
> point of attaching storage that is not coming from one of the SATA
> cables to the drive bays. USB is a bad option for your boot disk for
> most OSes. Do you have an open PCIe slot? Even if your motherboard
> does in fact limit you in that way, you could take a step back and
> consider swapping out the motherboard for something with M.2. Here's a
> URL with a limited search (in stock, one brand--MSI, AMD socket,
> shipped by the site, has 2x M2, etc.) that shows you the range of form
> factors and prices:
> https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007625%2050001312%204814%208000%204841%204131%20600567794
>
> I understand I'm not answering the question you asked. If you are not
> interested in the potential routes I'm pointing to, I totally get it.
> My suggestions aren't precious. I'm just coming at this as somebody
> who has run a lab with six desks long enough to have lifecycled
> everything more than once, and when I find myself fighting to
> configure a workstation system, it has paid to take a step back and
> ask if my assumptions are still valid.
>
> Cheers,