Hello! The TL;DR is:

I have an m.2 drive that is in a sturdy enclosure that has 1 TB. I have Ventoy with Medicat on there, with some backups of important data.

I still have a lot of room left on there, so I was thinking what else I could do, and the idea of basically installing a Linux Distro to a chunk of free space on there. Maybe Debian/Fedora or Arch.

Is there anything I should be aware of to help not break that system or rapidly kill the drive? It’s not a USB flash drive, it’s a M.2 drive that’s put on a small board that then allows it to talk via USB C/Thunderbolt.

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
    0·
    11 months ago

    Not really different than any other M.2 SSDs, that it’s over USB doesn’t matter.

    The only consideration for USB sticks is that they’re usually quite crap, so running a system off it tends to use up the flash pretty quickly.

    • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      The only consideration for USB sticks is that they’re usually quite crap, so running a system off it tends to use up the flash pretty quickly.

      not to mention that, due to the crap flash, they also tend to be quite slow and unreliable.

      • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        Definitely look for portable SSDs rather than flash drives. Different technology, usually significantly larger (physically). Easily saturates a USB 2.0 connection, so look for USB 3.0.

        Back when Microsoft supported Windows To Go, they had a short list of verified drives to use. Surely outdated now but might be a good starting point.

        FWIW I used to run Windows 10 off a Samsung T5. It worked fine, except that it would always shut down when I tried to suspend. Still works as far as I know, I just haven’t used it in a long time.

        • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzM
          0·
          11 months ago

          look for USB 3.0

          USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) is quite ancient by today’s standards. I’d recommend a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) or even a USB 4.0 drive (20/40 Gbps) drive.

    • christophski@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      But it’s not a usb stick, it’s an m.2 drive in an enclosure… So your second point doesn’t apply

      • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
        0·
        11 months ago

        It indeed doesn’t, its purpose is to show the differences and clarify why/where OP might have heard you need special care for portable installs on USB sticks.

        All the guides and tutorials out there are overwhelmingly written with regular USB sticks in mind and not M.2 enclosures over USB. So they’ll tell you to put as much stuff on tmpfs as possible and avoid all unnecessary reads and writes.