I’d like to install OpenSUSE to a USB stick, and use it as a complete portable OS. The live cd/USB way of doing it saves all the files, settings, etc to a compressed file. I’d like it to function more like a normal suse system, just on a USB stick… (and portable).
Is this possible?
(BTW… Installed 11.3 to my desktop, replacing 11.2. Imported mount points, formatted everything other than my home partition. Booted, and it was almost as if nothing had changed! Easiest re-install of my life… Thanks SUSE!!)
Shorter lifespan is ok. And, I’m getting a fast pen drive (flash voyager gtx).
I can’t find much information on it… Can I simply install 11.3 to a pen drive, as if it’s a hard drive, or is there a suse specific way to do it? The script that’s used in the instructions at “pendrivelinux.com” was written for v11. Does anyone know if it still works?
Maybe this isn’t the right place to ask this, but isn’t a USB stick similar to a SSD? Couldn’t I just do the SSD optimizations (try one of the new flash friendly file systems, or make a few mods to how it works w/ ext4) to extend the life of the drive a bit?
But really, that’s not a concern. It will mostly be for repairing systems… get used a few times a week…
Yes and no a USB stick is not a SSD. They both use flash memory but the SSD has special controls to ware level the memory usage. The problem with flash to date is that any memory cell has a limited number of erase/write cycles (10-50K) before it dies. SSD’s have special firmware that spreads the cycles out across the entire disk and also has reserved cells that can used as the originals die. USB stick have none of these advanced features.
