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?

  • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    7 months ago

    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.