USB flash drive used as hdd?

[Denithor]

Like the title says, is it possible to use an 8/16GB flash drive as the primary hdd for a computer? I think it'd be cool to set up something like this for use as a Folding box. Once you had XP setup you wouldn't need anything but the motherboard/cpu/ram/gpu/flash and powersupply obviously. Would make for a quite compact setup.

Comments, suggestions?

 

[myocardia]

Yes, it could work, as long as the motherboard you're using supports booting from USB drives. There are steps you have to go through, though, to get most of them to work correctly, as well as them being very slow at writing. You also have to remember that USB drives can be read from almost indefinitely, but they can't be written to very many times. Windows writes to it's C: drive alot, which is going to wear them out pretty quickly, I would think.

 

[Denithor]

Hmm, so how are standard flash drives different from the SSD harddrives now available (in terms of the write/wear out issue)?

 

[myocardia]

Well, SSD's are alot faster than USB drives, plus more importantly, the SSD's have firmware that doesn't let Windows keep writing to the same place(s) continually. The SSD manufacturers call this feature "wear leveling".

 

[HumblePie]

There are a few guides out there detailing how to do this.

There is a bit of work to do to get Windows at least on a USB drive. Vista, by Microsoft's hard coding, will NOT boot from a USB drive or install on one. The only way to do it, is to trick vista into thinking it is not being installed on a USB drive and the only way I know how to do this is to install vista through a VMWare. Through a VMWare, a USB thumb drive shows up as a generic physical drive with no USB root drivers supporting it.

After installing Vista, there are some registry hacks you have to do in the VMware console to prevent Vista from trying to detect what device it is booting from.

When you get all that done, you can use a USB thumbdrive to run vista, but the problem is, if you EVER get an update, or attach another USB device to force a USB check, Vista will find out what it's installed on and screw things up again. Just remember, that if you do that, don't shut down the computer before going back into the registry and re hacking it so Vista doesn't recognize the device it is installed on.


The only reason to do this, is SSD are still fairly expensive. 32GB for about $150 for the "cheapest" one and 32GB isn't all that much. Personally, when the 100+GB drives finally get into the $150 or less range, I'll then pick one up. I would do the thumbdrive route, but the hassle isn't worth it.

 

[alfa147x]

just use a 8gb CF card and a CF-ATA adapter

 

[Denithor]

Interesting. But there you have the cost of the adapter ($15-25) and the CF card itself (much higher than equivalent capacity USB flash drives).

Is there any advantage of the CF method versus a flash drive? I note different speed ratings on the CF cards, how will those compare to the throughput for a flash drive connected via USB?

BTW, I'll be installing XP not Vista, are there any issues to watch out for?

 

[Modelworks]

If your doing it for a folding box, just install linux.
Its runs very well using even a 1GB flash drive.
With some of the distro you don't even have to have a hard drive.
Just a livecd configured for whatever task you want the pc to perform.

 

[Denithor]

Only problem is I'm using the GPU client which is not available for linux yet..

 

[lopri]

USB sticks are way too unreliable to be used like a regular HDD. Plus, the higher the capacity the slower they tend to be.. (not sure on this but that was my experience)

It's great to use a small client VM. I have a 4GB SLC stick with XP installed and I use it strictly for web browsing. No slowdown due to antivirus (because I didn't install one) and no biggie even if it's infected. Takes 10 secs to copy over the original VHD and start over. I love it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Instructions on how to make USB flash drives bootable with XP installed on them: http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

 

[Christobevii3]

Compact flash does write balancing so it doesn't overwrite the same sector over and over, so yes that is an advantage. Also, since it can be put onto a normal hard drive channel with an ide adapter, any operating system could be installed to it. USB flash drives have a bad habbit of having windows xp reset the usb ports on boot.