[Wylug-discuss] Booting from external SSD ... Your thoughts and experiences?

[james riley]

/me is still using one of those desktops in a home setting.

Just my tuppence's worth.

On 17 February 2012 13:10, Paul Brook <paul at codesourcery.com> wrote:
>> That's largely because when I last tried to boot from USB on a regular
>> basis (possibly up to 5 years ago) I found a lot of old
>> non-USB-supporting BIOses around, and booting from GRUB on a CD was
>> similarly painful.
>>
>> So, have things improved? Or is booting from external USB drives still
>> a bit of hit-n-miss?
>
> Depends whether your clients are still using the same PCs they were 5 years
> ago :-)  Pretty much all vaguely recent machines will support booting via USB.
> Then again there's an awful lot of people still running windows XP on fairly
> antiquated hardware.  Lots of modern machines don't have any other way of
> connecting external media, especially since the advent of netbooks, etc.
>
> Even assuming you have a machine capable of booting from USB, there are other
> issues with this plan:
>
> - All bios control this differently.  Many allow a one-off choice, others you
> have to make a permanent change and remember to switch it back afterwards.
> Making a machine boot off USB by default isn't going to win you any friends.
> - If the bios has been password protected then you're completely screwed.
> - Do you really trust you distro to handle whatever random hardware you throw
> at it?
> - Do your clients have a spare machine? Many companies don't have desktop
> machines.  It's one-per-employee laptops with docking stations.
> - Many of the companies I work with are very security conscious.  The idea I
> should hijack one of their machines - hardwired to their internal network, and
> probably holding sensitive data locally - is going to get me laughed out the
> building.
>
> My worry is that while success gives you a fairly good working environment,
> failure is catastrophic.  i.e. when you turn up on site and the machine
> doesn't work, your only option is to go home again.
>
> I'd say a small(+cheap) netbook and request use of a monitor+keyboard if
> that's too cramped for prolongued use was a much better bet.  It's a
> requirement that can be easily explained, and is hard to get wrong.
>
>> If booting from external drives is now more viable, can I just stick
>> an SSD in an external eSATA/USB caddy? ... or do I need to by a
>> specifically 'external' SSD at twice the price (for a GBP 5  caddy).
>
> The "external" SSD is almost certainly just a regular SSD in an enclosure.
>
> The most important factor is probably the quality of the enclosure.  In my
> experience £5 caddys are what you'd expect for the price.  They work, but have
> flimsy connectors and generally poor build quality.  If you're carrying it
> around and replugging it all the time you probably want something a bit more
> robust.
>
> High-end enclosures may support USB3 and eSATA. This may currently have
> limited applicability on-site, but handy for things like doing backups to your
> home machine.
>
> Preinstalled elcosures may be more compact.  There's no real standard on the
> thickness of 2.5" drives.  An SSD is likely to be slim, whereas a general
> purpose elclosure will be designed to accomodate fat multi-platter rotating
> drives with twice the thickness.
>
> Paul
>
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