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Bootable Linux USB stick: Difference between revisions
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→USB stick: hardware considerations
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For creation/maintainance a bunch of sticks, a multiple port USB-HUB is a very usefull tool. E.g. the Raid Sonic Icy Box IB-AC6113 accepts 12 Sandisk Extreme sticks at once (port 7 has to stay empty due to spatial restrictions) and all 12 stick are recognized by the OS (CentOS7). | For creation/maintainance a bunch of sticks, a multiple port USB-HUB is a very usefull tool. E.g. the Raid Sonic Icy Box IB-AC6113 accepts 12 Sandisk Extreme sticks at once (port 7 has to stay empty due to spatial restrictions) and all 12 stick are recognized by the OS (CentOS7). | ||
== | == Hardware considerations == | ||
Cheap USB sticks can hold a lot of data, but when it comes to writing small files (which happens when used as the operating system disk), they are either slow from the beginning, or their write performance quickly degrades as soon as free space becomes low for the first time. We have been using [https://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html CrystalDiskMark] (Windows) for characterizing USB media: as a rule of thumb, the "Random write 4k blocks" disciplines should not show less than 1 MB/s for the media to be of acceptable performance. However, CrystalDiskMark does not capture the effect of degrading write performance, which can only be mitigated by TRIMming the media - a feature that few USB sticks support. | Cheap USB sticks can hold a lot of data, but when it comes to writing small files (which happens when used as the operating system disk), they are either slow from the beginning, or their write performance quickly degrades as soon as free space becomes low for the first time. We have been using [https://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html CrystalDiskMark] (Windows) for characterizing USB media: as a rule of thumb, the "Random write 4k blocks" disciplines should not show less than 1 MB/s for the media to be of acceptable performance. However, CrystalDiskMark does not capture the effect of degrading write performance, which can only be mitigated by TRIMming the media - a feature that few USB sticks support. | ||