flash drive installs: read 1st post B4 posting

[SteveRiley]

SR you are just sooo smart....all that CLI stuff

Nah, I let Google do all my thinking for me. I just regurgitate what I find there

is -t in any way comparable to using the tea timer as a benchmark?

I've never installed the tea timer becuase I thought was nothing more than a desktop toy. You mean this is a real timer?

hdparm with the benchmark options is actually pretty accurate because it's directly measuring the performance of the disk (-t) or the CPU/memory/cache (-T). For example, here's the output from my T520:

sriley@SRiley-T520:~$ [B]sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda[/B]
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1044 MB in  3.01 seconds = 347.42 MB/sec

sriley@SRiley-T520:~$ [B]sudo hdparm -T /dev/sda[/B]
/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   13338 MB in  2.00 seconds = 6672.51 MB/sec

The first test shows the throughput of my Crucial M4-CT256 SSD (SATA 6Gb/s). The second test shows the effective throughput of my Core i7-2620M (4 x 2.70 GHz) and RAM.

[woodsmoke]

just joking about tea timer, it was the obligatory item in all distros panels until maybe four years ago.

I notice that it is now updated to be a "nifty UNITY applet"...

Will wonders never cease, what used to be a Linux applet....disappeared because the general opinion was "why?" and now is a Unity applet....lol

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/10/t...dated-oneiric/

[Teunis]

teunis@W520:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 278 MB in 3.01 seconds = 92.44 MB/sec

teunis@W520:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
Timing buffered disk reads: 48 MB in 3.02 seconds = 15.89 MB/sec

teunis@W520:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdc
/dev/sdc:
Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.08 seconds = 19.49 MB/sec

teunis@W520:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.03 seconds = 21.12 MB/sec

teunis@W520:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
Timing buffered disk reads: 104 MB in 3.06 seconds = 34.03 MB/sec

teunis@W520:~$

The second one is a 1GB USB2 thumb drive.
The third one is a 8GB 30MB/s SanDisk Ultra CF card via a Lexar USB3 dock.

The fourth one a 16GB Cruser USB2 thumb drive!
And the last a 1TB 2.5" Samsung HD on USB2.

So a regular HD on USB2 can achieve about 1/3th the speed of a build in SATA drive but nearly double that of a USB2 thumb drive.

[SteveRiley]

For USB drives, speed across the NAND chips can vary greatly. I have a 4 GB USB stick that I regularly use for installing the latest of whatever I'm interested. When I dd something to that drive, transfer speed typically starts out at 24 MiB/sec for the first 500 MiB. Then it slows down to 12 MiB/sec and remains there. It's almost as if this drive were intentionally built with faster NAND at the beginning but slower (and cheaper) NAND elsewhere.-

[vinnywright]

ok @woodsmokey

I would have jumped on this when you first posted it .........I live to tinker.......but Iv been busey moving to MD and getting settled in .
anyway I just purchased 2 16G USB sticks (sandisk..don't know yet if thay have the U3 systems on them or not) and will be INSTALLING ...... Precise on one hear tonight.

I do assume you meant an actual install to the USB and not just a live USB ..........that is 2 different things right!!

and I picked up a IDE/SATA HD to USB enclosure to try it that way as well.

as for USB sticks with U3 systems I do have 1 that I increased the size of the virtual cd drive to 700Mb and loaded a linux mint-KDE-live cd .ISO on and it boots and runs fine.

back with more as I get them done .....

VINNY

[vinnywright]

well just did the install to the 16G sandisk ..............working just fine on this box will try to boot it on a different one tomorrow and see how that goes .............grub (installed on the USB stick had all the systems on this box listed )so we will see if it(grub)gets freaked out when I boot it on something else.

hdparm returns this

vinny@vinny-HP-G62-Notebook-PC:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
Timing buffered disk reads: 46 MB in 3.05 seconds = 15.10 MB/sec

will try the HD enclosure next......tomorrow.

VINNY

[vinnywright]

well didn't get to the HD enclosure today .........but I did try to boot the USB stick on a different box........it did give me the grub screen and started to boot (could see the light flashing on the stick) but I never got a screen back after it started to boot no splash nothing................I will try it agin with no quiet splash on the boot line maby see where it errors out .

I did however get the NFS server back up on the ubuve test box

VINNY

[joneall]

How about an internal flash drive

If I understand correctly, you are talking about installing to an external USB memory key.

I would like to know if Ubuntu would recognize and be able to use an internal SATA flash drive like the Samsung SSD 840 series.

[SteveRiley]

I run Ubuntu on SSD drives in two different laptops...nothing special is required.

[joneall]

I run Ubuntu on SSD drives in two different laptops...nothing special is required.

Great, thanks, Steve.

[joneall]

One thought. You have them in a laptop. Can one install them into a deskside model? Is the so-called installation kit necessary in that case? (I'm talking about the Samsung 840 series.)

Thanks in advance.

[james147]

One thought. You have them in a laptop. Can one install them into a deskside model? Is the so-called installation kit necessary in that case? (I'm talking about the Samsung 840 series.)

Thanks in advance.

You should be able to install ssd in any computer that accepts sata connections... I find most ssd are 2.5" form-factor (designed for laptops) but will work in a desktop with a 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor (the ssd I have came with such an adaptor) if not they are not expensive as it is just a bit of metal in the right shape .