Eh? US chiming in… In the last week I bought a 64gb usb flash drive for $15 and a 12tb usb external hdd for $189.
Fittingly, the flash drive was for Lubuntu iso, and the hdd was because my other external harddrive was exfat formatted and I didnt want to lose all my TBs of media by reformatting to ext4. (Now my minipc diy media/file server has 18tb… Not a bad scenario.)
Anyhoo…the external SSDs were super expensive at the store, but I didnt need that. If I were expanding my gaming setup, id be looking at external ssd.
But distros are comparably tiny. So you can use up all those ancient sticks with a few GB you got as advertising that are collecting dust in some corner of a drawer for years. Sometimes they are even actually tiny when you free them from their tacky masot- or logo-shaped exterior.
A Debian live image fits into 4GB flash drive. If you search stuff for sale you can probably find them cheap, and 4GB is practically the smallest size you can buy.
I see. Those are all USB 2.0, probably, no? Does the lower read/write speeds compared to 3.2 make a difference for booting from a live ISO?
Cause the smallest USB 3.2 flash drives I could find were 16GB. But that leaves room for a casper.rw and a swapfile if necessary, or even multiboot, so it’s not that bad. And they come in 5 packs!
Of course, if someone has a collection of promo sticks, use what you have of course…
In my experience the USB 2.0 drives are slower to boot initially and install, but I think they decompress to RAM since for me it has never impacted performance while using the Live functionality, so if you are ok waiting for boot/install they are just fine.
I hope you realize how much more expensive USB mass storage devices have become in the last three months.
Eh? US chiming in… In the last week I bought a 64gb usb flash drive for $15 and a 12tb usb external hdd for $189.
Fittingly, the flash drive was for Lubuntu iso, and the hdd was because my other external harddrive was exfat formatted and I didnt want to lose all my TBs of media by reformatting to ext4. (Now my minipc diy media/file server has 18tb… Not a bad scenario.)
Anyhoo…the external SSDs were super expensive at the store, but I didnt need that. If I were expanding my gaming setup, id be looking at external ssd.
But distros are comparably tiny. So you can use up all those ancient sticks with a few GB you got as advertising that are collecting dust in some corner of a drawer for years. Sometimes they are even actually tiny when you free them from their tacky masot- or logo-shaped exterior.
A Debian live image fits into 4GB flash drive. If you search stuff for sale you can probably find them cheap, and 4GB is practically the smallest size you can buy.
Can you even find 4GB flash drives anymore? Outside of sketchy ebay stores, I mean?
The biggest online store in my country has 4GB flash drives permanently on sale for $3.
They hand out 1GB businesscard labeled ones like table pens pretty often at vendor booths
Companies at onferences give 4/8gb out sometimes. They buy branded ones in bulk.
I see. Those are all USB 2.0, probably, no? Does the lower read/write speeds compared to 3.2 make a difference for booting from a live ISO?
Cause the smallest USB 3.2 flash drives I could find were 16GB. But that leaves room for a casper.rw and a swapfile if necessary, or even multiboot, so it’s not that bad. And they come in 5 packs!
Of course, if someone has a collection of promo sticks, use what you have of course…
In my experience the USB 2.0 drives are slower to boot initially and install, but I think they decompress to RAM since for me it has never impacted performance while using the Live functionality, so if you are ok waiting for boot/install they are just fine.
Good to know! Thanks