On 04/27/2016 02:10 PM, Joe wrote:
On Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:43:08 -0400 Steve Matzura <s...@noisynotes.com>
wrote:
Do you still think I should go the mech drive route and not put it
on a USB key?
I've been happy with the drive, but as I said, I'm looking for a SSD
replacement soon. I've found typical USB sticks to be slow,
I use SanDisk Ultra Fit 16 GB USB 3.0 flash drives for system drives (a
poor man's SSD). I really like the compact form factor -- very little
drive sticking out to break off. Read performance is good, especially
random reads -- boot, desktop startup, and application startup times are
noticeably faster than 7200 RPM mechanical drives. But, writes can
cause Xfce to stutter (sometimes for several seconds). I don't know if
it's Xfce, X Windows, Linux, the flash drive, or what, but for $10 it
works good enough for low-end servers.
but something I haven't tried yet is one of the faster microSD cards
(class 10) in a USB reader. A Raspberry Pi is noticeably brisker
with a class 10 card than with a typical class 4, but of course
that's direct, not through USB.
My assumption has been that the insides of microSD cards and USB flash
drives are much the same. I have an SD to USB adapter and my laptop has
an SD card port -- it would be interesting to run some benchmarks the
next time I buy an SD card.
Also, even a 160GB hard drive (which mine is) is way ahead of even
today's USB sticks in capacity, so it can store a fair amount of
backup material as well.
The SanDisk Ultra Fit is available in 16, 32, 64, and 128 GB.
For my file server and my backup server, I put the Debian install on
SanDisk Ultra Fit 16 GB USB 3.0 flash drives and I put the data,
backups, etc., on 3 TB desktop drives in mobile docks. Moving the
flash drive and HDD to another machine is easy.
David
