Operating system bootable from a USB flash drive? It works, but…

not every flash drive is suitable for someone, as I found out to my unpleasant surprise. Not that it couldn’t be done in principle, sure. Basically, you “burn” the official installer on one and use the other as the disk to install the system on. I just strongly recommend that you physically disconnect the drive with the main system on your computer before doing this. Certainty is certain.


However, with most flash drives, the system becomes completely unusable whenever it has to be accessed. You will usually know this already during the installation, which takes an incredibly long time. I installed Ubuntu linux via a classic USB (not USB-C) port with a blue connector (USB 3.0 interface if I’m not mistaken). I tried four flash drives: the old all-metal Kingston 32GB, the new tinned Kingston 128GB (Kingston DataTraveler Kyson), the new miniature Verbatim 16GB and finally the plastic SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 32GB. This is the only one, which the system can use without problems. But then again, it sticks out so much from the laptop that I’m just waiting to offend it!


What does it depend on? I have no clue. Not on the transmission speed. At least normal file copying goes without problems on all of them. The problem is likely to be competing requests when accessing multiple files at the same time. If anyone has an idea on how to tell which flash drive will work before I buy one, be sure to comment!

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