Installing Linux on USB – Part 1: Difference between USB hard drive and USB Flash (or Jump or thumb) drive
Welcome to the part 1 of “Installing Linux on USB” series. Last week I made an announcement that I am planning to write a series of article on Installing Linux on USB drives – Hard Drive and Jump Drive. Also I had created a poll (my first ever poll!) to see how much interest is there regarding this topic. So let’s get started with Part1…
Purpose: Many people loosely use the term USB hard drive and USB jump drive interchangeably. In fact they are not the same – surprised? I was too but when I first discovered that. You may ask, “OK so what has this to do with installing Linux on USB devices?” And this is what exactly I am going to answer for you guys in this post.
Generally speaking (and correct me if I am wrong), USB devices falls under two classes:
1. USB Hard drives
2. USB flash/jump/thumb drive
Note: From now on we will just the term “flash” which implies “thumb” and “jump” drives also. In short,
Jump drive = Flash drive = Thumb drive = Pen drive = Key chain drive.
Let’s look at some of differences between the two:
|
Parameters |
USB Hard drive |
USB Flash Drive |
|
Design |
Exactly like IDE hard drive but comes in an enclosure with a IDE to USB interface |
It is made up of non-moving parts unlike USB hard drives. |
|
Size |
Large in size just like traditional hard drive (> 40 GB) |
Usually smaller in size – Ranging from 128 MB to 32 GB |
|
Moving Parts |
Yes, just like traditional IDE Drives |
No moving parts. It is a solid state device (SSD) |
|
Performance/Data transfer |
Fast (with USB 2.0) |
Slow even with USB 2.0* |
|
Reliability/Ruggedness (from data loss) |
Less |
More (because of no moving parts) |
|
Linux (Debian) installation |
Straightforward |
Not so straightforward |
|
GRUB support |
Yes 100% (no issues) |
Fails some of the times** |
|
Image |
|
|
* I am still not 100% sure on this one. I am researching on this meanwhile.
** I did had success installing GRUB couple of times and was able to boot also.
Similarities:
1. Both can store data even when power is turned off
2. Both plug into USB port of the computer
3. They both are recognized as /dev/sdX by the Linux kernel i.e. as SCSI devices.
where ‘X’ stands for driver letter – sda or sdb or sdc and so on.
In my next post you will see that installing on USB Hard Drive is a very simple process and don’t need any special trick or step to do it as compared to USB flash drives. As you must have guessed by now why is this the case – because of the above mentioned differences – specially the SSD (Solid Storage Device) one.
Finally if you notice any errors or you do not agree with the above differences feel free to comment.
As usual, please leave a comment/feedback if you have any. Comments encourages bloggers to post more and keep their spirits high.
Also please don’t forget to rate this post below.
Part 2: Install Debian Lenny on USB Hard Drive
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January 28th, 2009 at 9:21 am
[...] In this part we will learn how to install Debian Linux (Lenny) on a USB hard drive. In part 1 of this series I had explained the difference between a USB hard drive and USB flash drive. I [...]
January 30th, 2009 at 1:50 am
[...] Part 1: Difference between USB hard drive and USB Flash (or Jump or thumb) drive [...]
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 pm
[...] Please remember that a USB flash drive is different than a USB hard drive. Please refer to our part 1 to see the [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
[...] Part 1 [...]
April 5th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Very helpful.
Especially the emphasis on the difference between hard and pen drive installation. A lot of newcomers get stuck on trying to follow manuals which avoid this little difference. :-)
Reply to this comment
April 30th, 2009 at 11:15 am
In part 1 I read the following in the table:
…No moving parts. It is a solid state device (SDD)…
Obviously you mean SSD instead of SDD.
Reply to this comment
Admin Reply:
April 30th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Hi Pieter,
Thanks for pointing that out. It is corrected now.
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June 8th, 2010 at 8:51 am
I don’t agree that USB Hard drive (or traditional IDE Hard drive) is less reliable than USB Flash drive.
1. I have a USB Flash drive, and it can only hold very small file (several MB). If I copy a large file (e.g. 100MB), the data gets corrupted (md5sum changed). I am so scared that I am reluctant to use Flash Drive any more. However, I hope that this is just a singular case.
2. However, this is the fact: After a certain write option, most Flash Drive will no longer hold data. The life expectancy of a Flash drive is much shorter than a USB Hard drive (or traditional IDE Hard drive).
Reply to this comment
James Barrow Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 5:41 am
I agree. Flash drives only have a limited number of writes. Hard drives usually are a lot more reliable than flash drives. IIRC the same could be said about the old magnetic tape drives and hard drives – tape drives were used for backup, but hard drives for daily use, because the tapes were more useful at keeping data over long periods of time reliably. Tape drives were too slow though, that’s why we have hard drives. Flash drives and solid state drives might be faster, but are they more reliable? I suppose though, with a good backup policy, the speed they offer you might outweigh the maintenance issues – if you need high performance that is. Most people would probably be better off with using the normal hard drives though… I probably will be for quite a while to come.
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