← Back to team overview

lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

Re: Installing Lubuntu to usb drives

 

On Saturday 08,May,2010 05:50 PM, Phillip Whiteside wrote:
Hi,
with regards to the degradation, if you are using persistance, then you will be re-writing to the usb (albeit not as frequently). My advice to people installing to usb is always to get a usb stick that is certified for Vista or Win 7 as 'Readyboost', these devices are both faster than 'unbranded' usb sticks & are designed specifically for memory swapping. (It's really odd to be recommending something that Microsoft do, but I happily accept that there is an accreditation scheme for usb memory sticks). These sticks are slightly more expensive than the 'unbranded' ones, but are worth it for those who value their data (as we all do).

Regards,
Phill.



On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:34 AM, C David Rigby <c.david.rigby@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:c.david.rigby@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

    On Saturday 08,May,2010 05:27 PM, Goh Lip wrote:

        On 05/08/2010 05:02 PM, C David Rigby wrote:

            On Saturday 08,May,2010 04:53 PM, Goh Lip wrote:



            Hello Goh Lip,

            I was planning on doing this at some stage (I just
            installed Lubuntu to
            my laptop in a separate partition and I am reading up on
            update-grub
            right now).

            I've read that one should NOT allocated a swap space on a
            USB flash
            device due to the limited number of re-writes that flash
            media can
            support before it degrades. Do you concur with this? Would
            an "Install
            to USB" how-to be a useful addition to our wiki?


        David, that was fast!
        I am not a good source for swap and 'swappiness' but from what
        I know, and others please correct me if I am wrong, the
        following points hold

        o when installing an OS to usb drive, the desktop hard drive
        swap is enabled at the fstab of the usb OS as well. (I
        verified this). In other words, when using the usb OS at the
        desktop where it was installed, the swap is automatically
        enabled due to the presence of the fstab entry, (unless of
        course the uuid is changed)

        o For many cases for new computers, the swap is usually zero
        or close to zero, ie, no need for swap unless extremely high
        stress applications is run (or more usually, before adobe
        flash crashes your firefox :)  ). The 'newer' uses for swap is
        for hibernation and sleep and this requires a slightly more
        memory than your ram memory.

        o Yes, rewrites will degrade flash and hard drive memory but I
        think it will require 'petazillions' to do that now that most
        home users will have no need to worry about that.

        Having said that, what should you do? Actually, I don't know.  ;)
        But I'll you what I did. With hard drive memory so much now, I
        allocate a more than enough to my hard drive swap. 2.5 x ram.
        But my flash? Zilch! And I don't lose any sleep over it.

        Hope that helps, David.

        _______________________________________________
        Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop
        <https://launchpad.net/%7Elubuntu-desktop>
        Post to     : lubuntu-desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
        <mailto:lubuntu-desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
        Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop
        <https://launchpad.net/%7Elubuntu-desktop>
        More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp

    I assumed that if I do a manual partitioning of the USB flash
    drive's storage, I could simply skip allocating swap. The result
    would be that there would be no fstab entry for swap. I'll try it
    and find out at some point.

    I agree with you that my laptop w/ 2 GB RAM is probably not going
    to need swap with reasonable desktop usage under Lubuntu. My test
    system back in Singapore w/ 256 MB RAM would probably need it once
    I have mail, web browser, and a few other apps running.

    Thanks Goh Lip. Cheers, David


    _______________________________________________
    Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop
    <https://launchpad.net/%7Elubuntu-desktop>
    Post to     : lubuntu-desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:lubuntu-desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop
    <https://launchpad.net/%7Elubuntu-desktop>
    More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp


And still another option is an actual, small USB hard disk. Prices are lower now for this. They tend to be pretty slow, in my experience.

Cheers
David

Follow ups

References