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linux on an external drive

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Name: richjt
Date: July 26, 2008 at 02:42:26 Pacific
OS: XP
CPU/Ram: 3.2 512
Comment:

I have tried installing on an external USB2 connected drive,
without success. USB only for backup?
I am going to install an IEEE 1394 firewire card, OS's go on
these in Mac's, so I think that's needed for this machine.
Comments please.

ricardojt



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Response Number 1
Name: clive_pearce
Date: July 27, 2008 at 05:45:33 Pacific
Reply:

You can install to a usb from a Ubuntu live cd. Also your pc needs to be able to boot from usb.

Before posting try google. Backup. Use anti virus software.


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Response Number 2
Name: jam
Date: July 27, 2008 at 09:52:42 Pacific
Reply:

I've never tried to run an OS off an external drive, but wouldn't the USB bus be a deterrent to decent performance? USB 2.0 has a theoretical max transfer rate of just 480Mbit/s (60MB/s) but the actual rates are MUCH lower. Modern ATA HDD's max at 133MB/s & SATA HDD's max at 300MB/s.

From wikipedia:

"Although high-speed USB 2.0 nominally runs at a higher signaling rate (480 Mbit/s) than FireWire 400, typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 280 Mbit/s, with 240 Mbit/s being more typical. This is likely due to USB's reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire delegates the same tasks to the interface hardware. For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, which allows high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.[18]

FireWire 800 is substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB.[19]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewi...

It seems to me an OS run on an external HDD thru USB 2.0 would have comparable performance to running it off an old ATA33 HDD? If anything, firewire is *probably* the better choice.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...


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Response Number 3
Name: jefro
Date: July 27, 2008 at 13:07:50 Pacific
Reply:

Might need to look at usbgrub.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10


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Response Number 4
Name: don1
Date: July 27, 2008 at 22:06:45 Pacific
Reply:
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Response Number 5
Name: Poco87
Date: August 7, 2008 at 08:05:03 Pacific
Reply:

I have gotten a few different Linux OS's to boot off my external, though I have been dual booting.


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