[ikk157]

No, you don't start a fresh operation system every boot. What you just described is the behavior of liveCD mode of Linux distros, when you "persistent/fake" install linux on a USB, during your normal usage you will perform all the I/O operations on/from the USB. I have to say that running a OS on your USB will likely kill your USB because the flash memory technology suffers and die with I/O operation. (We can say that USB shares the same problem of SSD, they are basically using the same technology).


I have experienced OS running from RAM a long time ago so I don't remember clearly how it exactly works, but I can suppose that you can run your OS from RAM but at the same time perform I/O operation to get/store data. I mean I think that system & program binary files are ALL LOADED ON THE RAM AND NEVER UNLOADED meanwhile your data is likely put on your RAM and when you start the shutdown process it will unload the files inside the storage memory.

So you’re saying the SSDs tend to experience issues being used as the boot drives? If so, why is it that many people consider them being more reliable than HDDs? Doesn’t the fact that they contain no moving parts make them more reliable?

As for running the OS on the RAM, since the data is only unloaded to secondary storage during a shut down, doesn’t that mean a sudden power off would lead to data loss? Since the pc didn’t get the time nor did it know that it had to unload the data.

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How much storage i need on this USB Flash drive to try it?
Im Interesting tbh, never did this before.

I’ve seen people flashing raspbian on sd cards with as little storage as 8GB (dont get me wrong, you MIGHT be able to go lower than that). So in theory, an 8GB flash drive should do the trick.

However, you won’t get much free storage space to play around with. So play it safe, and use a 16GB USB flash drive.