Linux Question

Hello, I want to get linux installed but I only have one hard drive and do not want to have dual partitions. I do have an external hard drive and was thinking about installing linux on the external hd.

The thing I'm wondering though is, is this ok? I really don't know much about data transfer rates between SATA cables and USB but I'm assuming USB is much, much slower and so I am assuming running linux off an external hd connected by USB will be slow. Is this assumption accurate or totally off?

You can run Linux off a USB thumb drive and it is not too much slower, I would not think it would be too slow, I have movies on my external hard drive I play off it on USB 2.0 and they play fine transmitting that much data across the connection so I do not think it would be too slow. Which version of Ubuntu is it, if you run Xubuntu, it would be better than Gnome Ubuntu. But if you have USB 2.0 then the transfer rates should be OK. But as I said, Try something like Linux Mint xfce, or the afforementioned Xubuntu and this should work just fine.

neubejiita said:

I have movies on my external hard drive I play off it on USB 2.0 and they play fine transmitting that much data across the connection so I do not think it would be too slow.

If those were Bluray rips, then we'd be talking about some serious data rates, however DVD-rips are like 10 Mbps maximum -> 1.2 MB/sec, which is even achievable with USB 1.1

DivX/VideoCD/MPEG/MPEG2 files will all have much lower data rates than that, typically 100-300 Kbps.

To make a comparison, SATA theoretical maximum would be 1.5 Gbps for SATA 1.0, 3.0 Gbps for SATA 2, while PATA-133 would be somewhat less than 1 Gbps.

USB 2.0 should have a max theoretical speed of 480 Mbps (hi-speed) or 12 Mbps (full speed). The latter would be unsuitable for running an OS, unless it was DOS or Windows 95 or something.

RUnning a modern Linux distro from an external HD would be bearable, provided you have enouch RAM and the connection is USB 2.0 hispeed or better (e.g. eSATA).

After the SSD died on my laptop a few months ago, I ran my (Linux) system off an SD card in the laptop's SD card reader (which is on an internal USB bus) for several months. It was fine for me.

You can also install some Linux distros on the same partition as Windows, for example with Ubuntu and some of its offspring just burn the installation image on a CD, plop it in while you're in Windows and choose "Install inside Windows." It'll create a file in your Windows partition that emulates a separate hard disk, and you can choose to boot into Linux just as you would with a normal installation.

This way you can access Windows' files from Linux, but you can't access files on the virtual disk from Windows (you can, however, always save your working files on the real disk).