Author Topic: USB sticks  (Read 1456 times)

Hawkmoon

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USB sticks
« on: August 04, 2024, 10:01:43 PM »
Background: I have a bunch of Amazon-sourced USB sticks, in sizes 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB. Most are 10-packs of the style with the wrap-around metal protector that swings out of the way when you need to use the USB. Over a couple or three years I haven't encountered any issues with any of them ... until a couple of days ago.

Facing the expiration of Windows 10 and having multiple computers that aren't up to snuff to run Windows 11, I want to play with Linux a bit to see if I think I can transition to Linux when Windows 10 reaches end of support next year. I have settled on MMDE6 as the Linux distro I'm most interested in. It's a distro of Mint Cinnamon, but it's based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. One of the reasons (not the only one) I'l leaning that way is that LMDE still (so far, at least) supports 32-bit as well as 64-bit.

I made up a USB stick with LMDE6 for testing in "live" mode. It didn't take what I considered to be an exceptionally long time to make up the USB stick, and it runs on an older HP laptop no slower than Windows 10 on a physical hard drive, and probably a bit faster. But, although Rufus allows the creation of a partition on the USB to allow Linux to be "persistent" (meaning it will save any configuration and customization changes you make), on a 4 GB drive I only had room for a 500 MB persistent partition. That's not big enough to try installing and running the Linux version of FreeOffice on the USB.

So I made up another USB stick, this time using a 16 GB stick and creating a 4 GB partition for the persistent function. OMG! It took (literally) overnight for Rufus to format the USB stick and install a bootable version of LMDE6. On the same HP laptop as the other USB stick, the 16 GB stick takes forevvvvvvvvver to boot into Linux, and everything runs like molasses in January. I ran a benchmark on th 4 GB stick and I'm currently running the same benchmark on the 16 GB stick. So far, the read speed on the 16 GB stick is about half as fast as the 4 GB stick, and the write speed is about one-third.

Does anyone have a source for affordable, FAST USB sticks in the 8 GB to 16 GB range?
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2024, 10:11:30 PM »
Walmart.  Buy Sandisk multipacks.  Doubt you'll find one as small as 8gb.

There is certainly a difference in USB sticks.  Work had a few cheapies that that match your description, that we'd sell.  Sloooooooow, compared to the Sandisks.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2024, 12:17:24 PM by lee n. field »
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bedlamite

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2024, 01:06:32 AM »
Smaller ones are usually older tech and slower.

Sandisk Extreme or Samsung Pro are probably your best bet.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CF84TSWM?th=1
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zxcvbob

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2024, 02:00:14 AM »
Background: I have a bunch of Amazon-sourced USB sticks, in sizes 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB. Most are 10-packs of the style with the wrap-around metal protector that swings out of the way when you need to use the USB. Over a couple or three years I haven't encountered any issues with any of them ... until a couple of days ago.

Facing the expiration of Windows 10 and having multiple computers that aren't up to snuff to run Windows 11, I want to play with Linux a bit to see if I think I can transition to Linux when Windows 10 reaches end of support next year. I have settled on MMDE6 as the Linux distro I'm most interested in. It's a distro of Mint Cinnamon, but it's based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. One of the reasons (not the only one) I'l leaning that way is that LMDE still (so far, at least) supports 32-bit as well as 64-bit.

I made up a USB stick with LMDE6 for testing in "live" mode. It didn't take what I considered to be an exceptionally long time to make up the USB stick, and it runs on an older HP laptop no slower than Windows 10 on a physical hard drive, and probably a bit faster. But, although Rufus allows the creation of a partition on the USB to allow Linux to be "persistent" (meaning it will save any configuration and customization changes you make), on a 4 GB drive I only had room for a 500 MB persistent partition. That's not big enough to try installing and running the Linux version of FreeOffice on the USB.

So I made up another USB stick, this time using a 16 GB stick and creating a 4 GB partition for the persistent function. OMG! It took (literally) overnight for Rufus to format the USB stick and install a bootable version of LMDE6. On the same HP laptop as the other USB stick, the 16 GB stick takes forevvvvvvvvver to boot into Linux, and everything runs like molasses in January. I ran a benchmark on th 4 GB stick and I'm currently running the same benchmark on the 16 GB stick. So far, the read speed on the 16 GB stick is about half as fast as the 4 GB stick, and the write speed is about one-third.

Does anyone have a source for affordable, FAST USB sticks in the 8 GB to 16 GB range?

When I was doing this sort of thing a couple of years ago, I had better luck buying SD cards and micro-SD cards with really fast ratings (like Class 10) and using them in a USB card reader.  They were faster than the USB thumb drives.  But I still have a bunch of 4 GB thumb drives that I use with my 3D printer, and I have used them for small bootable disk images without any problem.  They seem to work better than the larger drives.  All the 8 GB and larger thumb drives that I've used sucked, but maybe that's because I buy cheap ones that don't have speed ratings like SD cards. (the worst was a 64 GB Lexar, which I thought was a good brand)  Stick with Sandisk and you might be alright, unless you get counterfeits.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2024, 05:27:24 AM »
I found a 3-pack of SanDisk Cruzer Glide 16 GB sticks, two of which were unused. It took Rufus about 10 minutes to mount the LMDE6 .iso to that stick, compared to overnight for the brand 'X' stick. That's a good sign. Too late now to move over to the laptop and try it out -- I'll do that tomorrow or the next day.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #5 on: August 06, 2024, 12:46:23 AM »
Update: With a quality USB stick, once Linux boots up everything else runs at least as fast as Windows 10 on a physical hard drive, and probably faster. It takes a while to boot up, but that's not unexpected and would be tolerable during a period of familiarization with Linux.

BUT -- when I created the USB stick, I used Rufus to mount the .iso, and I created a 6 GB "persistent" partition. This is suppiosed to allow the system (on the USB) to retain any changes I make. So I fired it up, added a couple of icons to the desktop, adjusted the time zone so the date and time will display correctly, and opened up LibreOffice to set the default file formats to Microsoft file formats, and then I changed the workspace background color in Writer and activated the vertical ruler.

Then I shut the system down, and restarted it. None of my changes were saved.

Can any Linux gurus explain why, and help me make the persistent feature work?
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2024, 10:59:49 AM »
Update: With a quality USB stick, once Linux boots up everything else runs at least as fast as Windows 10 on a physical hard drive, and probably faster. It takes a while to boot up, but that's not unexpected and would be tolerable during a period of familiarization with Linux.

BUT -- when I created the USB stick, I used Rufus to mount the .iso, and I created a 6 GB "persistent" partition. This is suppiosed to allow the system (on the USB) to retain any changes I make. So I fired it up, added a couple of icons to the desktop, adjusted the time zone so the date and time will display correctly, and opened up LibreOffice to set the default file formats to Microsoft file formats, and then I changed the workspace background color in Writer and activated the vertical ruler.

Then I shut the system down, and restarted it. None of my changes were saved.

Can any Linux gurus explain why, and help me make the persistent feature work?

I will give this a try, exactly as stated.  LMDE, make stick with Rufus, with persistence.

(I do use persistence, mostly as a way to store my 20+GB of stuff I carry around all the time, on the same device as my bootable Parted Magic.)
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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2024, 11:07:30 AM »
For Linux and pre 11 Windows installs I use YUMI https://pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/
Can just copy the ISOs directly over to the stick into it's corresponding (windows or Linux) folder. You can have dozens (depending on stick size) of OSs on the stick at the same time.
I reserve Rufus for W11 installs where if I want to bypass the HW checks and the stupid MS account requirement and I keep a separate stick reserved for that
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zxcvbob

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2024, 12:12:37 PM »
For Linux and pre 11 Windows installs I use YUMI https://pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/
Can just copy the ISOs directly over to the stick into it's corresponding (windows or Linux) folder. You can have dozens (depending on stick size) of OSs on the stick at the same time.
I reserve Rufus for W11 installs where if I want to bypass the HW checks and the stupid MS account requirement and I keep a separate stick reserved for that

Can you slip install W11 over W10 on a machine that doesn't quite meet hardware requirements using Rufus, or does it have to be a scratch install?
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #9 on: August 06, 2024, 12:18:56 PM »
I will give this a try, exactly as stated.  LMDE, make stick with Rufus, with persistence.

(I do use persistence, mostly as a way to store my 20+GB of stuff I carry around all the time, on the same device as my bootable Parted Magic.)

And, I see exactly the same thing as Hawkmoon.  Booted the stick.  Connected to local wifi, installed a few packages, put a text file on the desktop.  Reboot nicely (shutdown to power off, power on, stick was never out of the usb port), it's all gone.  Rufus is the one from the MS store.
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #10 on: August 06, 2024, 12:20:34 PM »
Can you slip install W11 over W10 on a machine that doesn't quite meet hardware requirements using Rufus, or does it have to be a scratch install?

Pretty sure you can.  (I don't recall right now if that's one of the things I've tried.  I know I've done an "in place upgrade" of W11 over an existing one, to attempt to resolve some problem.)
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Hawkmoon

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #11 on: August 06, 2024, 02:21:09 PM »
And, I see exactly the same thing as Hawkmoon.  Booted the stick.  Connected to local wifi, installed a few packages, put a text file on the desktop.  Reboot nicely (shutdown to power off, power on, stick was never out of the usb port), it's all gone.  Rufus is the one from the MS store.

I found a Q&A on the Internet late last night that says "The session can be made persistent by pressing F6 on boot and then typing persistent." Doesn't say at what point in the boot sequence, and I haven't had time to test it yet.

It also says the "persistent" is ... well, in one place it says it's a file named casper-rw, and in another place it says it's a partition named casper-rw. Then it says casper-rw stores downloaded programs, and home-rw stores settings. My USB stick has a directory called casper (not casper-rw). It has a 6 GB partition (which is what I asked Rufus to create), but it's unnamed. I have no file, directory, or partition named home or home-rw.
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #12 on: August 06, 2024, 03:14:53 PM »
I found a Q&A on the Internet late last night that says "The session can be made persistent by pressing F6 on boot and then typing persistent." Doesn't say at what point in the boot sequence, and I haven't had time to test it yet.

It also says the "persistent" is ... well, in one place it says it's a file named casper-rw, and in another place it says it's a partition named casper-rw. Then it says casper-rw stores downloaded programs, and home-rw stores settings. My USB stick has a directory called casper (not casper-rw). It has a 6 GB partition (which is what I asked Rufus to create), but it's unnamed. I have no file, directory, or partition named home or home-rw.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence

everythinng looks like it shhould
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #13 on: August 06, 2024, 03:52:27 PM »
Debian Live behaves like I expect.  Desktop background changed, wifi connection, file on desktop, survives after reboot.

Persistence partition is labeled "persistence" in Debian Live, but "casper-rw" in LMDE.  And the grub command line behind the boot menu is different. 
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Hawkmoon

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #14 on: August 06, 2024, 05:38:09 PM »
My persistence partition is unnamed. How did you create yours to get it named "casper-rw"?

And even after reading the article you linked, I still don't understand if "casper-rw" is a file name, a subdirectory name, or the name of a partition.

What size is your casper-rw partition, and what file system did you specify for it?
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #15 on: August 06, 2024, 06:54:13 PM »
My persistence partition is unnamed. How did you create yours to get it named "casper-rw"?

And even after reading the article you linked, I still don't understand if "casper-rw" is a file name, a subdirectory name, or the name of a partition.

What size is your casper-rw partition, and what file system did you specify for it?


Rufus did it.  It's the label on the parition.

So far nothing I'm doing with persistence is actually working, other than with Debian Live.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #16 on: August 06, 2024, 09:56:24 PM »
Well, I'm disappointed. When I discovered that Rufus could now generate "persistent" live USBs, I thought that would allow me to try out Linux on multiple computers without having to risk trashing one, or having to go through the motions of backing up a hard drive before doing a Linux install on an actual computer. I guess it's back to Plan A, which was to clone the hard drive in one of the two laptops I just bought, then install LMDE6 as a dual boot, and hope it doesn't screw things up too much.

I hadn't heard about using Rufus to install Windows 11. That's really a thing? Can it make a bootable "live" version of Windows 11 that runs off rthe USB stick?
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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #17 on: August 07, 2024, 03:09:28 AM »
Ever thought of using an M.2, Type 22XX, PCIe, NVMe, SSD in a cheap adapter shell? They work GREAT! I have a few 256gb SSD cards and can hot swap them out using this case I bought off Walmart.com

https://www.walmart.com/ip/BENFEI-M-2-NVME-SATA-SSD-Enclosure-10-Gbps-USB-Type-C-Type-A-PCI-E-M-Key-B-M-Key-Solid-State-Drive-Enclosure-Support-UASP-Trim-NVME-SATA-SSDs-2230-22/5287736388
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Hawkmoon

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #18 on: August 07, 2024, 09:40:23 AM »
Ever thought of using an M.2, Type 22XX, PCIe, NVMe, SSD in a cheap adapter shell? They work GREAT! I have a few 256gb SSD cards and can hot swap them out using this case I bought off Walmart.com

https://www.walmart.com/ip/BENFEI-M-2-NVME-SATA-SSD-Enclosure-10-Gbps-USB-Type-C-Type-A-PCI-E-M-Key-B-M-Key-Solid-State-Drive-Enclosure-Support-UASP-Trim-NVME-SATA-SSDs-2230-22/5287736388

Interesting thought. I have a couple of 256 GB SATA SSD drives and a USB adapter umbilical cord, but that's no help if the persistent feature doesn't work.
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #19 on: August 12, 2024, 07:47:55 PM »
Can you slip install W11 over W10 on a machine that doesn't quite meet hardware requirements using Rufus, or does it have to be a scratch install?

I did it this afternoon on my "shop" computer, a 2012(ish) vintage Dell Optiplex.  Decent specs, other than being "old".  The upgrade worked fine, didn't complain about hardware at all.
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zxcvbob

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #20 on: August 12, 2024, 08:08:22 PM »
I did it this afternoon on my "shop" computer, a 2012(ish) vintage Dell Optiplex.  Decent specs, other than being "old".  The upgrade worked fine, didn't complain about hardware at all.

That's what I wanted to hear.  Thanks
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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #21 on: August 12, 2024, 10:17:39 PM »
I did it this afternoon on my "shop" computer, a 2012(ish) vintage Dell Optiplex.  Decent specs, other than being "old".  The upgrade worked fine, didn't complain about hardware at all.

Did the upgrade save all your existing software or will you have to reinstall everything?
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lee n. field

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #22 on: August 13, 2024, 10:01:52 AM »
Did the upgrade save all your existing software or will you have to reinstall everything?

Saved everything.
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RocketMan

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #23 on: August 13, 2024, 10:50:16 AM »
Saved everything.

I'm going to give that a try.
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

zxcvbob

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Re: USB sticks
« Reply #24 on: October 31, 2024, 12:39:05 PM »
The first older PC I want to try upgrading to W11 with a Rufus stick is a Dell small desktop with I think a 4th generation I3 processor.  I also don't remember whether it has 4GB or 8GB of RAM.  It has the 32-bit version of W10 Pro installed and runs it very well, I just seldom use that PC and it hasn't been powered up for a while.  (so if the install goes horribly wrong I haven't lost anything and can just install Linux, or W10 again)

That will have to be a scratch install, right?  Since there are no 32-bit version of 11?

I think all I3, I5, and I7 processor regardless of generation support the instruction set needed for 11 but I don't know.

If that works, next will be a 6th-gen I5 laptop with lots of RAM, but I really don't want to lose anything on that one.

Instead of a USB stick, a spare 256GB SSD attached to a USB umbilical cord should work too, right?  I'm assuming the SSD would be a lot faster.
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