A more reliable and faster pc?

[machoman013]

I've been thinking to myself.. I had an old Tandy 80086, and it had a ROM'd hdd of it the original OS... not one crash ever (except freezing from heat).. and other programs were written and executed from a 2nd hdd....

what if we could go back to something more simpler.. i know windows can install in a usb device, such as a flash drive.. what about installing the OS on a flash drive... like a 2GB one then tuck it inside the case.. perform your necessary configs etc, and tell windows swap to be on a 2nd hdd like a sata or eide for programs to run and execute off of and write on... then lock the usb flash drive into a rom...

would it be plausible as far as rights and read/write requirements
would it be faster
would it be more reliable since users can't easily screw up things on the main OS
would it be the better bang for your buck...

i've been plotting this over and over, but i don't have the money to experimenting.. was wondering if any of you guys have tried this?

 

[imported_LoKe]

There's a linux distro that fits on a floppy.
Could easily put that on the 32MB Memory Key that's being given away free in the Hot Deals section.

 

[machoman013]

well i meant more for the average consumer, i.e. windows xp users.

 

[MrChad]

would it be plausible as far as rights and read/write requirements

It could be plausible, but flash drives are inherently slower than hard drives. The fastest USB flash drives read at 24 MB/s and write at 14 MB/s. Compare that to 40+ MB/s for modern SATA hard drives.

would it be faster

No. See my first answer.

would it be more reliable since users can't easily screw up things on the main OS

I don't see how it would. Hard drives are pretty reliable these days. I have no idea what the failure rate for USB flash drives is.

would it be the better bang for your buck...

Hard drives can be purchased for $0.50 / GB. USB flash drives are nowhere near that price.

 

[timswim78]

Flash drives have a limited number of read/write cycles. A flash drive would most likely wear out long before a hard disk would.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: machoman013
.what about installing the OS on a flash drive... like a 2GB one then tuck it inside the case.

Knoppix works fine from a 1GB or larger USB drive, and if you're only got a small USB drive, Damn Small Linux fits in 50MB. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

perform your necessary configs etc, and tell windows swap to be on a 2nd hdd like a sata or eide for programs to run and execute off of and write on... then lock the usb flash drive into a rom...

The "ROMs" in PCs today are flash memory too.

would it be more reliable since users can't easily screw up things on the main OS

One of the reasons Linux is more stable than MS Windows is because users don't have permission to modify system files. While you can set up MS Windows NT/XP systems in similar ways, it takes a lot of effort to configure all of your software to work correctly without administrative privileges and so few users do so.

You can go further with the read-only theme on Linux. You can mount / and /usr read-only to prevent your system files from being modified. Alternately, you can mark your system files with the immutable attribute to prevent them from being modified.

Any of those methods can be bypassed by someone who knows what they're doing, but that's a good thing because OSes are much larger and more complex than they were in the Tandy days and the modern Internet requires regular security updates.