Solid state disk vs harddisk

[T6]

"USB sticks vary wildly in quality"

cheap and decent

http://www.kingston.com/flash/dt101g2.asp

fast and expensive

http://www.kingston.com/flash/dtR500.asp

[Dragynn]

I wish I could figure out how to get my machine to boot from firewire external HD, a live install from that would be waaaaaay faster than USB or CD.

[T6]

a firewire 400 or 800 is now very similar to a usb 2.0 recent hard disk or good usb stick

the great difference was in the past, now usb 3.0 is what interest more people

maybe firewire has days left counted now

[Dragynn]

a firewire 400 or 800 is now very similar to a usb 2.0 recent hard disk or good usb stick

the great difference was in the past, now usb 3.0 is what interest more people

maybe firewire has days left counted now

Yep, firewire never got near the market penetration, USB is cheaper. But in real world tests, even firewire 400 is waaaay faster than USB 2.0, both read and write speeds.  I just tested by writing a 456 mb iso to both the firewireHD, and then to a brand new USB stick:

USB= 94 seconds
Firewire= 9 seconds

Yeah, about ten times faster actually.

I'll be trying out USB 3.0 on my next build for sure, looking forward to it, but of course there's the expense of a new build, and since my older board supports firewire, and external firewire HD's can be had for a song (~20-25$ USD on Ebay), the choice was a no-brainer really.

[T6]

i was talking about a usb hard disk, not a usb stick

about prices, that sounds good but it is a dying hardware that is not as friendly as usb is now

also your usb stick must be very slow, i have copied files like that in less than 30 seconds, just copies a 720 mb iso to my kingston datatraveler 100 and took around 40 seconds to complete

i just copied 486 mbs of pictures, 990 files total to my usb hard disk, it took less than 30 seconds and you know how slow a multiple file/folder process can be, this was good for me

before that i copied another 4.6 gbs of similar files and it took maybe 4 minutes

[Dragynn]

i was talking about a usb hard disk, not a usb stick

about prices, that sounds good but it is a dying hardware that is not as friendly as usb is now

also your usb stick must be very slow, i have copied files like that in less than 30 seconds, just copies a 720 mb iso to my kingston datatraveler 100 and took around 40 seconds to complete

i just copied 486 mbs of pictures, 990 files total to my usb hard disk, it took less than 30 seconds and you know how slow a multiple file/folder process can be, this was good for me

before that i copied another 4.6 gbs of similar files and it took maybe 4 minutes

Yep, you're right about it probably becoming a dead-end, but it's cool with older hardware, don't have a USB HD to test on, but the reports i've seen suggest it's up to 70% faster in some areas than the best USB 2 hardware.

USB stick is a cheapie 4 gig Sandisk, so on the low end for sure speed-wise, they seem to hold up pretty well though over time. Have a 2 gig that's pretty old now, and it's still chuggin along

But given that on my machine at least, firewire runs faster than USB, and USB is faster than CD, that's why I'd like to see how well a Live install would run from it, might be pretty speedy, leave the onboard HD for data. Dunno, just musing here.

[Was_Just19]

.....
But given that on my machine at least, firewire runs faster than USB, and USB is faster than CD, that's why I'd like to see how well a Live install would run from it, might be pretty speedy, leave the onboard HD for data. Dunno, just musing here.

Give it a try ....  if the PC can boot from the firewire drive ...

[pags]

.....
But given that on my machine at least, firewire runs faster than USB, and USB is faster than CD, that's why I'd like to see how well a Live install would run from it, might be pretty speedy, leave the onboard HD for data. Dunno, just musing here.

Give it a try ....  if the PC can boot from the firewire drive ...

...or you can create a boot stanza in your installed grub that looks for the live install on the firewire drive (essentially passing bootup over to it after grub is done)...

[denoobifyme]

I have no wish to hijack a thread, but perhaps in addition to USB sticks, this discussion could also address a solid state internal hard drive like the one found in some netbooks.

NASA learned in the sixties that moving parts wear out much faster than non-moving ones. Seems axiomatic that an SSD produces less long-term friction and therefore less destructive heat, two enemies of anything physical.

I enjoy both the speed and the quiet of an internal, solid state drive. Yes, storage is small (only 8gigs) and relatively more expensive per unit of storage, but with a 1terrabyte USB storage drive available for under U$100, an SSD keeps me in the habit of being lean and more selective in what I download, install or have open while working.

As for speed, I don't have any precise numbers to offer for comparison, but I can boot PCLOS Gnome, manually login, acquire a wifi signal and send an email in under a minute.

The main disadvantage of an SSD compared to an HDD is a shorter storage life, and usually when they go, they go entirely. Flashrot also shortens the shelflife of data. Multiple backups, physical and cloud, counteract this problem, which is another good habit an SSD obliges me to get into.

[Dragynn]

.....
But given that on my machine at least, firewire runs faster than USB, and USB is faster than CD, that's why I'd like to see how well a Live install would run from it, might be pretty speedy, leave the onboard HD for data. Dunno, just musing here.

Give it a try ....  if the PC can boot from the firewire drive ...

...or you can create a boot stanza in your installed grub that looks for the live install on the firewire drive (essentially passing bootup over to it after grub is done)...

Oooh, don't think we tried that. Was going to see if it would work a few months back when Just19 was testing new scripts for liveUSB, but my machine doesn't have a setting in bios I can make work to get it to boot from firewire drive.

I'm not slick enough yet to know how to write such a boot stanza from scratch, but if someone can, i'll sure give it a test run and report results.

[Was_Just19]

Most of the stanza that is automatically created when you do the install, will be valid. Copy it to your main menu.lst.

You will need to change the hard disk number in the stanza to whatever the firewire drive is when booting.

So (hd0,1) might change to (hd2,1) ....  or another number ......  depending on your connected drives.

Should work ..... 


regards.

[Dragynn]

Most of the stanza that is automatically created when you do the install, will be valid. Copy it to your main menu.lst.

You will need to change the hard disk number in the stanza to whatever the firewire drive is when booting.

So (hd0,1) might change to (hd2,1) ....  or another number ......  depending on your connected drives.

Should work ..... 


regards.

Gotcha. Just got another re-master done that runs well and installs fine, i'll give it a shot with that tomorrow and post results, if it works, I expect it might be fast fast. Thanks, you do good work fer a fanboy.

[Was_Just19]

   

I hope it works for you .....  be interesting to know how fast it boots when compared to an external USB HDD, flash stick or Poorman's install on a fixed HDD.