Comments on: Installing Linux on USB – Part 1: Difference between USB hard drive and USB Flash (or Jump or thumb) drive

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:51:50 +0000

I don’t agree that USB Hard drive (or traditional IDE Hard drive) is less reliable than USB Flash drive.

1. I have a USB Flash drive, and it can only hold very small file (several MB). If I copy a large file (e.g. 100MB), the data gets corrupted (md5sum changed). I am so scared that I am reluctant to use Flash Drive any more. However, I hope that this is just a singular case.

2. However, this is the fact: After a certain write option, most Flash Drive will no longer hold data. The life expectancy of a Flash drive is much shorter than a USB Hard drive (or traditional IDE Hard drive).

By: Admin

Admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:53:02 +0000

Hi Pieter,

Thanks for pointing that out. It is corrected now.

By: pieter

pieter — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:15:03 +0000

In part 1 I read the following in the table:
…No moving parts. It is a solid state device (SDD)…
Obviously you mean SSD instead of SDD.

By: mf

mf — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:23:02 +0000

Very helpful.

Especially the emphasis on the difference between hard and pen drive installation. A lot of newcomers get stuck on trying to follow manuals which avoid this little difference.

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