WHS 2011 installed to and run from USB flash ?

[rmaciag]

WHS 2011 installed to and run from USB flash ?

I am posting this question on two forums : Hexus and AVForums.
I did some research on the web but so far I have not come across the definitive answer.

Similar questions have been asked before here and there but the answers varied.
Most respondents claimed that for "some reason" (unspecified) it cannot be done ("no Windows OS can be installed in that way").

Following valuable advice from Hexus community I bought popular HP Microserver N40L.
I am considering installing either FreeNAS or WHS 2011 as OS.
There are pros and cons for both.
As you are probably well aware, the unit has 4 HDD dedicated bays, one slot for optical drive and one internal USB port so there are various HDD / OS configurations possible without attaching anything to any external ports.

It is confirmed that FreeNAS can be installed to and then run from the internal USB flash port.
That leaves all 4 bays available for HDDs that I would aim to configure into some sort of RAID 10 (or two RAID 1).
I have a spare optical drive that I could slot into an empty dedicated bay – nice to have.

However somehow I am more inclined to install WHS2011.
The trouble is that if it has to go onto the HDD then the nice configuration described above is no longer feasible.
With some effort and after some gymnastics I could, potentially, build something like that :
- replace BIOS to enable 5th internal SATA port for HDD
- install WHS2011 onto 5th (existing 250GB) HDD that could be installed (with some brackets ?) into an empty space normally reserved for the optical drive
- as planned add 4 new HDD into 4 standard bays
While this can be done then :
- I loose option for the optical drive (not essential but could be useful)
- the setup is not quick and dirty by any means

Therefore before I decide what to do I would really like to know if WHS 2011 cannot be installed onto the USB flash stick.

If it can be do (i.e. it has been done) then, please, direct me to some instructions how it could be done.

[rmaciag]

Got some feedback on AVForums and consider this thread closed.
The simple answer remains NO.

After reading some posts here and there I am planning putting SSD drive for OS into ODD bay.

[jim]

It's not a particularly good idea as the OS needs regular writing to and those flash memory sticks won't last many rewrites before they give up the ghost.

Extra hard disk in the top slot is the correct answer, just make sure you get the fixed BIOS.

[Agent]

Pendrive write endurance isn't really an issue these days. Even low end MLC drives have ~10K write limit, which is writing the drive over once a day, every day for 27 years.

SLC based ones often have around 100 000, and these are appearing more due to USB3. Some places are claiming some drives even have 250 000 writes.....

An OS is *not* writing several gig a day for it's operations, which means you're unlikely to even fill a drive once a day (assuming something > a few gig).

So in short, write endurance is not an issue (sorry Jim ).

What is an issue is speed. A lot of pendrives not only have a slower write speed compared to HDDs, but read speed can also be bad. And the real problem? access times.
Most flash you find in pendrives / SD cards usually swap access speed for write speed. So you can have a nice and fast SD card in terms of reading and writing, but the random access speed is abysmal. This is why people rage when they buy a class 10 card for their phone, install apps / OS stuff to it and it's slow - it's because of the access speed, not the transfer speed.

For this reason alone, a lot of the flash you find on SD cards and pendrives is entirely unsuitable for a Windows OS. I've seen some people use cheap flash as a way of booting a Linux kernel and then copying the SD to a RAM drive and then running from there - that works fine.

[cami]

Can't the external eSATA on the micro server also be used? I'm sure I've seen someone make use of it. Pretty sure you'll need to the custom BIOS too.

At the moment I've just got my OS on the 250gb that shipped with it and 2x2tb and a 1tb. But once the HDD prices come down i'll want 4x2tb i think.

[jim]

Pendrive write endurance isn't really an issue these days. Even low end MLC drives have ~10K write limit, which is writing the drive over once a day, every day for 27 years.

SLC based ones often have around 100 000, and these are appearing more due to USB3. Some places are claiming some drives even have 250 000 writes.....

An OS is *not* writing several gig a day for it's operations, which means you're unlikely to even fill a drive once a day (assuming something > a few gig).

So in short, write endurance is not an issue (sorry Jim ).

I was under the impression that the USB drives used much cheaper flash and were far inferior in terms of longevity to SSDs and the like?

I just realised as well that this is about WHS2011 which is probably different - in the (old) WHS that I use, courtesy of demigrator.exe and so on, you could easily rack up a heck of a lot disk writing over the course of a day.

[Agent]

I was under the impression that the USB drives used much cheaper flash and were far inferior in terms of longevity to SSDs and the like?

The flash is usually of a cheaper / different type, but it mostly hits access speed and read / write times, not endurance.

If we take a look at the Sandisk product info for SD cards: http://www.flashgenie.net/img/produc...dv2.2final.pdf

Endurance

SanDisk SD cards have an endurance specification for each sector of 100,000writes typical
(reading a logical sector is unlimited). This far exceeds what is typically required in almost
all SD Card applications.

Therefore, extremely heavy use of the card in cellular phones,
personal communicators, pagers and voice recorders will use only a fraction of the total
endurance over the device’s lifetime. For instance—it would take over 10 years to wear out
an area on an SD Card based on a file of any size (from 512 bytes to maximum capacity)
being rewritten 3 times per hour, 8 hours a day, 365 days per year.

With typical applications, the endurance limit is not of any practical concern to the vast
majority of users.

100K of writes is a serious amount, given that SSDs often have 3/5k.

Now USB pendrives can use a range of integrated flash, don't get me wrong, but I've opened quite a few pendrives only to see a micro SD card + reader inside

So SD cards for an OS? Sure, as long as you can put up with the poor access speeds / times. the instant response from so many places now is that they will die due to writing, but is just false. It's your standard internet myth.

You can buy a SD to SATA adaptor and install Windows to it...but what's the point? 64Gig SSDs are almost not much more cost wise (A decent 32gig Sandisk Ultra micro SD is ~£27 + the SATA to SD bridge). You might as well go for a SSD with a much faster speed, no hardware in the middle and is just easier.

Check this PDF for some more maths: http://www.stec-inc.com/downloads/AN...CALCULATOR.pdf