Install Ubuntu on USB Flash Drive or USB powered external HDD?

I was thinking of installing Ubuntu on a couple of VMs. Would it be better to store each VM on a 8GB thumbdrive or store all the VMs on a 320GB USB-powered external HDD?

Which one would be faster?

Solution 1:

For running Ubuntu/Linux off of a external hard drive connected via USB then it's actually quite simple to do. Here are the steps, or rather, the steps I took.

Please Note: The following steps were tested using Ubuntu Version 9.10, but has not been tested with the later versions. Use at your own risk & discretion.

What You Will Need

1. A Computer with Internet access.
2. A LiveCD or LiveUSB with Ubuntu.
3. An external Hard Drive with USB capability.

What To Do

1. Open up your computer and remove the Hard Drive.
2. Plug in your external USB Hard Drive via the USB cable.
3. Stick in your LiveUSB or LiveCD and then boot up your PC.
4. Open up the boot menu, and choose to boot from the LiveCD/LiveUSB.
5. During the installation process you should your external hard drive listed, install Ubuntu to that.
6. Finish the installation process, turn off your PC, and put your other hard drive back into your computer.
7. Reboot your computer, go to the boot menu and select your external hard drive and attempt to boot from it. If it does congratulations, you now have an external hard drive with a full fledged Operating System on it.
8. Enjoy your external hard drive running Ubuntu/Linux! Please do let me know if this helps you! If not let me know about that too. :)

Solution 2:

In terms of speed, the flash drives would be faster as you don't have that millisecond delay. Its solid state vs platters. However, your solid state drive is going to be limited in writes so it will be prone to failure where as the platters should have a much longer life cycle.