# USB Flash Drive based install



## Phishfry (Aug 15, 2016)

I made a FreeBSD11-RC1 USB install of my ordinary amd64 desktop install and it works well.

What are the pro's and con's of a removable storage device used as my target device for an install?

Pro:
Portable

Con:
Alot of USB Drives are not super reliable

Made my install with no swap. I know there are consequences there. Is that a valid approach for flash memory. There is no TRIM for USB Flash right? I use 8GB System RAM.

I have other machines I would like to be able to use my FreeBSD stick in as needed. 
Is this a bad method? I have used an USB install with both pfSense and NAS4Free with no bad results. Obviously NanoBSD-Read-Only helps there. Was not really portable install.

I have used this method with a command prompt only approach for a while now but adding a desktop is new.

I have loaded up all the ethernet/wireless interfaces I use and comment them in/out to work on various machines.

I am using a second mounted thumbdrive for my working files just in case.

This allows me to use FreeBSD on other computers without touching the host drive.
Boots a little slow but works fine. I want a portable install.

Comments?


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## robroy (Aug 15, 2016)

Phishfry, I can offer two anecdotes:  both my main desktop (ThinkPad X230 model 2325RU0) and my main server (Supermicro 5018A-MHN4) boot from SanDisk Ultra Fit USB flash drives.  On both computers, all applications which generate significant I/O operate on other storage--NFS for the ThinkPad, and direct-attached hard disks for the Supermicro.

I realize that these USB flash drives weren't made for this, and that they'll probably fail much sooner than SSDs would.  Yet I've been rolling this way for over a year now, and everything's dandy so far.


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## Phishfry (Aug 15, 2016)

So far no hiccups. So slow boot time plus Xfce and Seamonkey start slow. After initial load you would never know the difference. I just installed a whole office suite plus dia and geany/glade on a 8GB Flash Drive(Mushkin USB3).
That is deluxe. 2GB remaining.


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