I do this same thing. I have Ubuntu on an external ssd with its own EFI partition. I followed this guide to get it setup and it works great.
Not really different than any other M.2 SSDs, that it's over USB doesn't matter.
The only consideration for USB sticks is that they're usually quite crap, so running a system off it tends to use up the flash pretty quickly.
But it's not a usb stick, it's an m.2 drive in an enclosure... So your second point doesn't apply
It indeed doesn't, its purpose is to show the differences and clarify why/where OP might have heard you need special care for portable installs on USB sticks.
All the guides and tutorials out there are overwhelmingly written with regular USB sticks in mind and not M.2 enclosures over USB. So they'll tell you to put as much stuff on tmpfs as possible and avoid all unnecessary reads and writes.
The only consideration for USB sticks is that they’re usually quite crap, so running a system off it tends to use up the flash pretty quickly.
not to mention that, due to the crap flash, they also tend to be quite slow and unreliable.
Definitely look for portable SSDs rather than flash drives. Different technology, usually significantly larger (physically). Easily saturates a USB 2.0 connection, so look for USB 3.0.
Back when Microsoft supported Windows To Go, they had a short list of verified drives to use. Surely outdated now but might be a good starting point.
FWIW I used to run Windows 10 off a Samsung T5. It worked fine, except that it would always shut down when I tried to suspend. Still works as far as I know, I just haven't used it in a long time.
look for USB 3.0
USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) is quite ancient by today's standards. I'd recommend a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) or even a USB 4.0 drive (20/40 Gbps) drive.
Good point. I can never keep my USB 3 naming schemes straight.
The faster nvme-based sticks can even exceed 3.0's 5gbps!
Seems right, but I wanted to double check my research before I fully committed.
I did this. I installed it just like usual. I did remove my existing SSD during the install so it wouldn't install grub on my Windows SSD.
My only complaint was that USB was too slow for everyday use. I can't keep track of the USB versions anymore, but it was one of the 3.1s or 3.2s. Not sure what Gen or whatever. The connector was USB type C.
I think that Ventoy has some kind of mechanism to let you do a persistent Linux live environment. Maybe try that?
What chipset does the adapter use? Check lsusb or dmesg.
Try adding a Manjaro install ISO with Ventoy, it works very well in live CD mode.
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0bda:9210 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL9210 M.2 NVME Adapter
And I don't know if a live CD is the best method for this, due to the how I intend this to be something I can just keep files on for a while. While I do have small persistence .dat files for Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu, it seems like a bandaid for what would be easiest, an installed distro where I can run the package update commands for, without juggling iso files.
That's a good chip. As a rule of thumb, Realtek = best, Asmedia = good, JMicron = garbage. JMicron adapters run super hot and draw a lot of power, leading to low speeds and dropped connections.
The reason I suggested a Live CD with persistence is that they are better at autodetecting stuff on the host machine. You can definitely install an actual system on the SSD but it will make assumptions about things like the GPU for example – won't expect to have to swap it at boot, you'll have to do it manually. Or you can run your desktop environment with a pure software driver but that may get a bit annoying at times, depending on what you want to do with it.
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