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Rich Freeman posted on Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:56:10 -0400 as excerpted: |
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> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 3:24 PM, Henry W. Peters <hwpeters@××××××××.com> |
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> wrote: |
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>> So my question is: will an external HD work (I do audio |
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>> editing/recording/graphics) as a system/work space? & more importantly, |
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>> will Gentoo install on such a HD (external, usb 3)) |
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>> |
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>> |
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> You did mention USB3, as did others in this thread. Hopefully this is |
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> obvious to all, but under no circumstances should you try to run an OS |
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> on USB2 or less. |
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People did it for years before USB3 and SATA2/3 arrived... and they did |
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it without the gigs of RAM often available for cache these days, too. It |
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certainly shouldn't be slower now than it was then, and with anything |
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even close to reasonable in terms of modern memory size (once we're |
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measuring in gigs, preferably 2+ but even a gig will help quite a bit), |
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it should be quite fast once the base system gets loaded. |
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Actually, USB2 is 480 Mbit/sec (as mentioned in my other reply), so |
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should do probably 30-40 MB/sec transfer, as long as it's the only thing |
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on the USB port. Sure, spinning rust storage is rated higher for |
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sequential I/O, but it's not /that/ much faster for random access due to |
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seek times. A good spinning rust disk might do twice that on good SATA |
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if you're lucky, not much more, particularly if it and the machine in |
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general are of USB2 or earlier vintage. So USB2 is likely to be a bit |
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slower with spinning rust, but not hugely so. And again, once the data's |
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in cache... |
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Just don't try to use the same USB2 port via hub or whatever to handle |
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keyboard/mouse/whatever-else as well. |
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But USB1.1 ... yes, THAT's slow! |
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And a good SSD would work on USB2, but I'm not sure why one would do it, |
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unless one had a spare laying around gathering dust... For that you |
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definitely want USB3 or SATA3 (tho SATA2 is half SATA3 speed so should |
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still be noticeably faster than spinning rust or USB2). |
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> eSATA or USB3 should in theory be fine, though I have |
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> no experience with the latter (I guess in theory it should work fine). |
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> |
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> Sure, any USB will work, but for USB2 or lower you'll start to get an |
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> experience that feels more like booting off of a LiveCD. |
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... Which as I said isn't too bad once it either loads to RAMDisk or gets |
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cached, as long as there's enough memory for that, of course, but 2+ gigs |
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should be quite reasonably usable, and most anything half modern should |
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have that, unless we're talking embedded, something like a router. |
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|
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |