| 1 |
On Friday 11 January 2008, Anthony E. Caudel wrote: |
| 2 |
> 2nd question: I must be dense on this one so someone help me out. |
| 3 |
> Since a USB stick is seen as a hard drive, why can't I do a standard |
| 4 |
> install to it? Is it because until lately they haven't been large |
| 5 |
> enough? I'm thinking of using an 8GB one. |
| 6 |
|
| 7 |
There's a few reasons: |
| 8 |
|
| 9 |
1. The memory used on those devices has a limited life - about 100,000 |
| 10 |
writes for the good ones and maybe 10,000 for the bad ones. With a |
| 11 |
standard install, frequent writes are the norm (think cache and other |
| 12 |
similar things). This usually ends up at the same spot on the disk, |
| 13 |
meaning your new install will last about a month if you are lucky. |
| 14 |
There are ways around this, for instance how a LiveCD does things. |
| 15 |
|
| 16 |
2. Booting off it is a pain. You need drivers for the entire USB stack |
| 17 |
at boot time, which usually means a ginormous initrd. |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
3. Size, which you mentioned |
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
-- |
| 22 |
Alan McKinnon |
| 23 |
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
| 24 |
-- |
| 25 |
gentoo-user@l.g.o mailing list |
Archives