Running Ubuntu off a USB drive?

Posted by Solignis on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Solignis
Published on 2011-10-12T03:31:28Z Indexed on 2012/12/16 23:07 UTC
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linux

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sata

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usb-flash-drive

I was wondering if a USB 2.0 Thumb drive has enough bandwidth to act as a primary system drive in an Ubuntu Linux server. More specifically an SAN server. I am running an iSCSI target, ZFS and NFS-kernel-server, BIND9 (Slave), and Openldap (Slave). I was thinking of resorting to a thumb drive because my new motherboard only has 4 SATA ports and I have 5 disks. 4 (ZFS Pool) 1 (System). And unless I get an expansion card there is no way to get more SATA ports.

This "server" leans more twords a home server. I use in my lab with my VMware server. It provides storage, or atleast it did until it died.

Would it still be better to go with the SATA hard disk?

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