Booting OS from flash drive

wolvers69 said:
Hi all,

Is there any particular type of flash drive that is better suited to an OS? I was thinking of using this one, it's for an XP installation.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-132-CS&groupid=701&catid=137&subcat=207

Thanks
Click to expand...

Do you mean "installing the OS" from a USB drive. Or actually "running the OS" from a USB drive? If the latter, I wouldn't bother: they aren't designed for that (yes, you can do it, but I wouldn't. Just get an SSD instead.) If you just want to put an ISO image of the OS onto a USB drive for installation purposes, then yes, the drive you have quoted is as good as any.

Nomadd
 
No I want to run the OS from it. There's no way I'm buying an SSD, it's a low cost project that I'm doing for an in car PC. I figured that it would be OK as it's gonna be with an Atom board. I don't know if I will have space for a 2.5" HDD so I thought this would be a good alternative. No?
 
Last edited:
wolvers69 said:
No I want to run the OS from it. There's no way I'm buying an SSD, it's a low cost project that I'm doing for an in car PC. I figured that it would be OK as it's gonna be with an Atom board. I don't know if I will have space for a 2.5" HDD so I thought this would be a good alternative. No?
Click to expand...

Yep, that drive should be OK.

There's an article on Tom's Hardware about BartPE, used to get XP running on USB sticks. My understanding - although I've never done it - is that MS do not officially support running the OS from USB (although they do offer embedded versions, etc. for the OEM market that will run off USB drives.)

So programs like BartPE fill that void, and let you create fully bootable and runnable XP installs off USB sticks. There seem to be plenty of vids on YouTube also.

TBH, you probably know more about this than I do. Still, there's tons of stuff about it on the net, so it looks like your plan is doable.

What are you going to do about display, though? Those small LCDs can be quite hard to read and seem to be quite pricey when I've seen them in SFF computer cases.

Nomadd
 
Thanks, I'll look into BartPE. I'm a little worried though that the constant read/writes will kill a flash drive quite quickly, although I can't find anything concrete about that. Ideally I'd use a 2.5" HDD but I don't know yet if I'll have room.

The touchscreens are readily available in 7" and 8" but can be pricey depending on whether I get an anti glare one or not. I think that'll be the last thing I buy!

Edit; just found this
Will my Corsair USB Flash drive last more than 10 years?
Yes. All Corsair flash drives are built with memory components that can handle AT LEAST 10,000 write cycles; typically they will handle an order of magnitude more than this. So, this means that in order to exhaust the drive in ten years, one would have to write to EVERY BLOCK in the device about 2.7 times per day, every single day. We simply can’t conceive of such a usage scenario; this would mean that on a fairly typical 8 GByte drive, one would need to write over 21 GBytes of data to it every day for ten years! USB flash drives simply are not used in this way.
If one thinks he or she might actually try this, we suggest buying a Corsair Flash Voyager GT or a Corsair Flash Survivor GT USB drive. They are built with components guaranteed for 100,000 write cycles. With these, one can write over 210 GBytes of data to the drive each day, for ten years!

Sounds OK to me.
 
Last edited:
wolvers69 said:
Sounds OK to me.
Click to expand...

Should be fine.

I've got an OCZ USB stick (8GB) and I absolutely hammer the thing, playing back video content from my XBOX 360. I literally do hefty read/write/delete cycles on it every day, as well as have it sat "active" for hours on end playing back content from the 360. It's been giving me great service for the last year or more. And, like the Corsair stuff, it's got a decent enough warranty should the worst ever happen. :)

Nomadd
 
It matters more than people think. I run ubuntu from a flash stick most of the time.

So far this has killed 3 PNY 4gb sticks, between 2 and 6 months lifespan per stick. Now using an ocz rally which has been putting in a sterling effort for about the last 10 months. Don't think Im going to use pny for a while, even if the ocz kicks the bucket soon.

edit: running windows from a usb stick can be done, but it's not particularly easy. The guide I followed was hosted/linked to on the eee user forums. Involves editing the XP iso, which I did manually but now seems to be deprecated in favour of scripts.
 
Last edited:
Seems that using Enhanced Write Filter turns the XP install into a kind of read only install to help extend the life of the flash drive.

XPlite looks like a good way of creating a slimmed down version of XP too.
 
Running Windows XP from a USB flash drive is an utter nightmare. You would be much better off getting an 8/16GB compact flash card and an IDE to CF adapter, they are dirt cheap on the popular auction site.
 
Considered a 1.8" HDD? Worth looking into maybe if space is tight. Although being a car, and therefore liable to bumps etc, how about a cheapo rubbishy netbook SSD?
 
Bit much Saundie. It takes some time to set up the iso, but once that's done you're away. A 1.8" hard drive will have similar issues, XP doesn't like being on an external drive.

You can probably install to the internal drive, image onto an external then use grub to boot from it. This might take some setting up though, and may still need the edited iso

Not used XPlite but had considerable success with nlite. I particularly like integrating drivers and applications.
 
I actually expected the 1.8" drive to be installed internally, as it would probably take up less space (no enclosure needed/no USB port blocked) as well as just running faster. But meh, OP's call :p
 
Yeah, a 1.8" HDD is something I've considered but they seem expensive and slow, unless someone knows otherwise. The 1.8" SSD drives are also too pricey for this project. I'm not too worried about having a HDD in the car as the case will be AV mounted and the HDD would probably be AV mounted in that too.

The CF card and IDE adapter set up seems quite popular with the CarPC lot so that's also an option and probably easier than USB flash as I would have thought it appears as a HDD doesn't it? TBH, a 16gb one would be big enough for a full install of XP wouldn't it?

I'll get the mobo in the week so I'll know then how much room I'll have.
 
wolvers69 said:
The CF card and IDE adapter set up seems quite popular with the CarPC lot so that's also an option and probably easier than USB flash as I would have thought it appears as a HDD doesn't it? TBH, a 16gb one would be big enough for a full install of XP wouldn't it?
Click to expand...
That is correct, as far as Windows is concerned it's an ordinary IDE drive, which will make installation a lot easier. 16GB would be more than enough for a normal XP installation - you could probably get away with 8GB though. It will also take up less room that a hard drive or USB flash drive, and deal with the vibrations of a car much better than a mechanical drive.
 
I've found an SATA to CF adapter board that's £17 and a 'Kingston 8GB Elite Pro Compact Flash Card' is £18. That's the same price as a WD Black 160gb laptop drive!!

The Windows folder on my laptop is 4.6gb so I'm sure I could get away with an 8gb card. I'm thinking I might use something like TinyXP too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom