Optimize Ubuntu install on USB-drive for longer life

Solution 1:

Since the life of SSD is more affected by writes (than by readers) I would recommend two things:

1) Do not use a swap partition,

2) Edit the fstab to ad noatime for the mounted partitions:
gksu gedit /etc/fstab

It should looks like this:
UUID=something / ext4 errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 1

Also you may like to check this: How do I optimize the OS for SSDs?

Solution 2:

ToRam

Probably the easiest way to prolong the USB stick life is to use the "toram" feature of a Live Environment boot.

This will boot the entire live CD/USB into RAM and therefore reduce/eliminate further USB disk accesses.

to-do - press F6 using the boot sequence and add toram to the boot string before the end -- i.e. .... toram --

edit - not at my ubuntu - possibly TORAM=yes - I'll check later.