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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Yes, getting a better flash drive will get you better performance. Make sure you get a good USB 3 drive, and plug it into a USB 3 port. I’ve always had good experiences with SanDisk drives. Avoid the off brand drives. They’re often really bad or even fake.
I wonder if you can replace the storage element with something bigger. It might be a data drive or an M.2 drive. You could replace either with a bigger device.
Yeah, sadly it does have a M.2 slot but it’s not SATA or NVMe, but instead SDIO. Someone out there has actually made an adapter that lets you put an sd card into that slot, which is super cool. But probably no better that a flash drive realistically, and much more expensive (you have to get the adapter manufactured)
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| NVMe | Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage |
| SATA | Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
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I’m curious, the current flash drive you are using… does it allow paging files? I would figure flash media would be marked portable to the OS and not allow page files to be used.
