On 19/02/2021 15:44, Semih Ozlem wrote: > Hello everyone, > > In comparing performance what are the pros and cons to using > > (i) live usb flash disk Usually, this is implemented with a compressed, read-only file system which is read into RAM. "Live" Operating Systems developed from the era of CD-ROMs etc, where the OS installation is physically read-only, so any changes *have* to be kept in RAM. This will be relatively slow to boot, and to load applications but once things are in RAM, they should perform very well. > (ii) live usb with persistence on a flash disk This would be expected to perform almost identically to option (i). The main advantage here is the ability to save files. Persistence won't increase performance (that is, don't expect any sort of MRU caching or similar). > (iii) full installation on a flash disk
Assuming that we're talking a USB flash disk, this could either be higher or lower performance than the Live installation. The Live installation will have a compressed (or at least solid) image to read from, whereas the full installation will have individual files to read. Due to the almost non-existent seek times of flash memory, several individual files are as easy to read as one big file of the same size, but note that by uncompressing the Live installation you are perforce requiring more data to be transferred off the disk. Most USB flash disks (even USB3 drives) are relatively slow at transferring data (they optimize for cost). Some devices DO have good controllers though, so YMMV. > (iv) full installation on an external hard disk (ssd or other) This probably depends much more on the actual disk, and its connection to the host. Generally speaking, even a relatively basic spinning rust disk will feel much more performant than an Flash Disk. Similarly, a SATA SSD will feel more performant than a HDD. In terms of connection... well there's so many to choose from: SCSI, USB, eSATA, Fibre Channel... and so on and so on. Generally speaking, go for a protocol that's designed for storage rather than general purpose. > (v) full installation on an internal hard disk (ssd or other) And here again, your choice of connection matters, too. SCSI, IDE, SATA, SAS, NVMe. However, internal connectors usually have the advantage that they're designed for short-range transport inside a metal box, so they _tend_ to be faster than their external equivalents where you perhaps need to handle a higher amount of noise. > > Thanks > > Semih
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