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External SSD is my default setup. I encourage it in the office as well. Even my gaming machine is setup at home this way. When popping over a mates I often just
by s_dev 6y ago
External SSD is my default setup. I encourage it in the office as well. Even my gaming machine is setup at home this way. When popping over a mates I often just plug it out and stick it in to their machine.
It's very useful to be able to seperate data from the hardware. If something is wrong with a machine I can just plug straight in to another one. An SSD is much easier to carry than a laptop.
The other problem with internal hard drives is when they get stuck inside e.g. with MacBooks being sealed these days. External SSDs can offer great flexibility and a trade off worth considering. I can imagine people having security concerns etc.
Disappointing to hear this about the new M1s.
I recommend people interested in dipping their toes into Linux Gaming trying this approach:
https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/ https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/
https://rufus.ie/ https://rufus.ie/
- protoman3000 6y agoHow do you boot Windows from USB without using third party tools?
- adrian_b 6y agoI have no idea. That is why I boot Linux from Thunderbolt or USB and for the few Windows programs that I need I use either Wine or a Windows VM.
- s_dev 6y agoWinToUSB is $50 but they allow you to do Windows Home and MBR partitions for free. Rufus and Disk Utility for Linux/mac OS
- userbinator 6y agoLook up WinPE. It's a lightweight "live CD/USB" version of Windows that can be run entirely in RAM. A full "portable Windows" install can be made from it. AFAIK all the third-party tools do is automate the process of copying thousands of system files and also act as a boot manager.
- easton 6y agohttps://rufus.ie https://rufus.ie Load a Windows 10 ISO and click Windows to Go, wait a couple minutes. Full Windows on a USB and it’ll automatically rediscover hardware if you move it to a new PC.
- adrian_b 6y agoI agree. Already for many years I work almost only on external (bootable) SSD's, for exactly the same reasons.
- mobilemidget 6y agoI can only assume your external disk is encrypted. Does that work fine with booting in every machine you tried?
- s_dev 6y agoI'd only bother to encrypt work machines -- I don't see why it wouldn't work. My gaming setup -- I'd definitely not bother. Not every machine is a guaranteed boot. It depends on MBR/GPT etc and whether UEFI is disabled in the BIOS and other configurations. However generally yes, they will. I've even have setups where the SSD would would have macOS/Windows/Linux. Much older motherboard pre-2012 generally don't like this setup and it can be v.slow.
- reasonabl_human 6y agoI have enough trouble dual-booting encrypted internal disks on the same machine... any changes to the TPM, or say booting one disk as a virtual machine from within the other disks OS running natively, breaks all AAD and windows hello authentication for me. Have to remove accounts and add them back in from settings on windows 10. So I’d be quite surprised if you’ve figured out a seamless way to boot an encrypted disk on multiple machines... For example, with bitlocker, won’t you need to enter the recovery key when trying to boot from a new machine? And have to sign out and back in to all relevant OS level accounts? Even then I face authentication issues at times I really would like this to work seamlessly because moving my internal SSD work disk to an external one would be far safer than lugging it around inside my personal laptop all the time. But the work disk has to be encrypted... Also, for hardware compatibility’s sake, I’d think Linux would be a far superior daily driver OS to ‘multi-hardware boot’, considering relevant drivers are loaded from kernel on boot rather than selectively pre-installed at OS creation time for that one device, increasing plug and play compatibility
- codys 6y agoBitlocker can be configured (via manage-bde on the cmdline, iirc) to use a passphrase and not use the TPM at all.
- valine 6y agoWhat about performance concerns? This sounds unbearably slow, especially for someone accustomed to an NVME SSD. Not sure why you would do that to yourself when cloud backups are an option.
- s_dev 6y agoI haven't noticed any performance degradation which is counter intuitive because I really expected there to be one. The Samsung T5 - T7s have been great in my experience. As for the cloud .. well that has it's own challenges too. Currently I'm trying to deGoogle myself and not doing a great job at it. To address any conventional SSD vs NVMe SSDs performance gap maybe consider and external NVMe SSD!
- shawnz 6y agoThe internal SSD in M1 Macs is actually superior even to NVMe, since the controller is integrated directly into the CPU.
- vetinari 6y agoIt has about the same performance as a normal PCIe 3.0 4x NVMe drive.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- buildbot 6y agoEven latency/at low queue depths? I’d expect it to have stunning low latency compared to standard nvme honestly.
- Dylan16807 6y agoThe analog parts are the slow parts. PCIe costs you less than a microsecond of latency. A good SSD has 60 microseconds of latency. You're not going to notice any difference from moving the controller.
- tinyhitman 6y agoWhat interface do you use (USB/eSATA, etc)? And you mention gaming setup, assuming windows, is this as portable as you make it sound? No weird hardware-dependent issues?
- checkyoursudo 6y agoA couple of years ago I used to run a qemu Linux-host/Windows-guest with PCI pass-through for GPU/SSD/etc. I could either boot the Windows install directly from the SSD, or I could boot Linux and then run the same install in qemu, without issue. I think there used to be more problems if you changed the hardware too much from the original install. Like, if you changed your motherboard (which the above would do of course), then you couldn't run the same install. But I don't think that's as much of a problem anymore? This was of course not an external SSD, so I don't know how that changes things, if at all.
- tinyhitman 6y agoCool! I used to run a similar setup, when I started out I passed through the hardware. But when things were running smoothly I never booted back into windows natively (Wasn't planning on this use-case). Nice to hear that it is possible. I feel like MS essentially gave everyone the wrong idea about OSes dealing with hardware changes.
- cehrlich 6y agoI've never done this, so my concern might be a total non-issue. But how do you prevent the external SSD accidentally becoming unplugged when you're doing this with a laptop? And what would actually happen if that did occur?
- aloer 6y agoI’m using a Samsung t5 via usb c on my MacBook and I’d confidently say it’s impossible to accidentally unplug. Not sure if they made the plug like that on purpose or not but it’s definitely harder to remove than most other usb c plugs. Even after more than a year of use What I’ve also seen some companies do is simply duct tape the ssd to the laptop lid so they can walk around freely to meeting rooms etc. At home I don’t need that
- reasonabl_human 6y agoAre you using it as an external boot drive or just as additional storage? I’ve seen people use it for storage but the parent comment is the first I’ve heard of potentially using this as it’s own OS.. Perhaps useful for dual-booting between personal and work installations, considering MacBooks are sealed with one drive?
- aloer 6y agoYeah exactly. I had to get my work MacBook repaired a few times last year and since I’m working from home I just mirrored the internal ssd to the t5 and booted from it on my private Mac. This way I kept all the company settings and programs working in a way that a time machine restore couldn’t do. Works just the way you would expect from an internal ssd and switching takes less than two minutes if necessary
- ArchOversight 6y agoMy companies MDM software would freak out if I did that. So much of it is tied to the specific serial number of the machine, as well as various baked in management of push notifications for profile updates and the like being tied to the device itself through Apple.
- sirius87 6y agoFolks doing this need to be careful not to plug their disk into a machine with a different OS. If the disk is plugged into an already booted system and the OS doesn't recognize the filesystem format, I believe macOS and Windows display a prompt to format the disk, which someone may accidentally click.
- shawnz 6y agoOne of the major advantages of the M1 hardware is that the storage controller for the SSD is directly integrated into the CPU. You would be losing a big part of that performance advantage by using an external OS volume.
- chungus_khan 6y agoThat isn't true. There wouldn't be a performance advantage to that at all (the limiting factors in storage performance have nothing to do with motherboard trace length, which has a negligible impact on performance in general), and the M1 Macs have fairly ordinary SSD performance.
- space_rock 6y agoWhat about driver differences? Plug into a computer with Nvidia card from a computer without...
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoMac installs support all compatible Mac hardware for that OS version.
- stefan_ 6y agoOn x86, that's the reality. I recently went Intel CPU & AMD GPU to AMD CPU & Nvidia GPU and just booted straight into my old Windows system, no problem at all. But on anything ARM based? The whole ecosystem doesn't give a fuck. Everything is hyperspecific for one platform exactly. At one point, the Linux kernel had thousands of board source files that specified exactly what hardware your cursed ARM board had. Then they invented device tree but frankly the situation has barely changed, don't expect to ever build a generic ARM image for anything.
- floatboth 6y agoYou are describing specifically "embedded junk" (which includes the M1, sorry Apple) not literally "anything ARM based". SBSA-compliant platforms boot with UEFI+ACPI, using fully generic DSDT descriptions for PCIe (ECAM) and USB (XHCI). Speaking of GPUs, quite common for them to have QEMU in firmware to run the x86-compiled EFI GOP driver straight from the card's ROM and get video output before the OS.
- heavyset_go 6y agoIt's cheaper to use custom ARM boards than it is to build hardware that is SBSA-compliant, so consumers can expect that most, if not all, of their ARM devices are not SBSA-compliant.
- NikolaNovak 6y agoI would love to do that; but Windows (yes yes I know:) seems to intentionally block normal installation to external SSDs; and all the workarounds I've tried so far have removed all the convenience factors :|
- sys_64738 6y agoThe M1 Mini is so small I can pack it and take it with me.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoI agree with your reasoning, especially since external SSD have made it safer to carry physically as opposed to external HDD. But I mirror my internal NVMe SSD to external SSD as the performance benefits of the former matters for me most of the time and when needed bootable external SSD is available at disposal. On macOS(not M1), Carbon Copy Cloner could create bootable clones of the disks. But I'm out of macOS for good as changes in Big Sur was too much for me, No offense to those who like it; but it seemed like a unicorn poop for me. Mojave was the last version which preserved the essence of macOS IMHO. Now I'm back to Linux, hopefully btrfs(snapshots) + Timeshift should recreate the same workflow.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoI regret & apologise for using unsavory words in the above comment.
- intrasight 6y ago>When popping over a mates I often just plug it out and stick it in to their machine. I would have assume that this would not work unless the hardware was the same - due to device drivers, etc.
- donut2d 6y agoBetween Macs with macOS, this usually works fine (except with older hardware that is not supported by the OS on the external drive). Can't say for Windows.
- s_dev 6y agoI would have expected that as well but found in general the process to be pretty seamless. I should probably mention I just stumbled on to this approach rather than having forged it through clever thinking -- it was originally due to a faulty motherboard burning out internal HDDs consitently. So I HAD to opt for an external drive and once I did the going back made little sense as it just imposed restrictions I didn't want anymore.
- bee_rider 6y agoIt is pretty much just an issue of having the right graphics drivers.
- heavyset_go 6y agoThis might be the case for Windows, but with Linux, most drivers are already distributed with the kernel and can be dynamically loaded and unloaded depending on what hardware is discovered while booting or afterwards.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoI actually started doing this on my TVs. They have usb ports. I bought a 16GB usb stick. And I just did youtub-dl to download a bunch of workouts. And then use roku app on the TV to play them. Saves time, and no youtube ads.
- rock_artist 6y agoIt works nicely if you don’t use commercial apps that uses device identifiers for activation. For such scenarios common by media creators external disks fail to “just” plug. Some apps uses dongles or allow activating to usb sticks. But still it’s the exception.
- suyash 6y agoI've been using external disk as my main macOS too and the only downside is the worry cable would snap out which it did a few times when I moved laptop around and crashed everything. Other than that, great way to upgrade my MBP with 1TB disk without needing to buy new MBP.
- reaperducer 6y agoWhen popping over a mates I often just plug it out and stick it in to their machine. This was one of the touted technical uses for the first (Firewire) iPod. Apple had a notion that people could carry an iPod with them, and then boot any Mac from it and start working right where they left off.[1] This is why Xserves had a Firewire port on the front. [1] As a point of interest, this used to also exist in the radio industry. Certain brands of control boards had "personality cards" that could be tuned[2] to a particular D.J. Then when the D.J. had to work from another studio, or remotely, he could pop his personality card into the control board and it would be preset to him. [2] And by "tuned," that meant tuned for his voice[3], to make it sound the way he, or his program director, wanted it to sound. [3] Even more interesting: Though these were circuit boards, the tuning was done mechanically, and by hand. They were a series of potentiometers covering different frequency ranges.
- grishka 6y agoOh the glorious offline-first software and hardware. I miss it. Today this would've been handled through "the cloud", requiring an account, a consent to tracking and analytics, a monthly subscription, and a reliable high-speed internet connection.
- bangonkeyboard 6y ago"Home on iPod" wasn't a full bootable OS X, just the user's Home directory. The feature was also canceled before release, likely due to performance or durability limitations of the iPod's micro hard drive.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago"It's very useful to be able to seperate data from the hardware." I have been doing this for decades, but I do it with USB sticks, not SSDs, with NetBSD, not Windows. After boot I can pull out the stick, freeing up the USB port for something else. I would be interested if I coul do the same with Windows but it does not seem as straightforward. I know it is possible but I also know there is a good chance I would never get it to work. For example, the EasyUEFI link you provided suggests I need to purchase software, the software only runs on Windows, Windows 7 is not truly portable and the authors are not clued in to the idea of separating data from hardware: "We recommend that you use Hasleo BitLocker Anywhere to encrypt Windows To Go drive to keep your data safe. If you want to upgrade Windows To Go to Windows 10 October 2020 Update (Windows 10 20H2), please go to Windows To Go Upgrader." If only there was a way I could buy Windows on a stick instead of having to buy a computer with pre-installed.
- abc_lisper 6y ago>>> After boot I can pull out the stick, freeing up the USB port for something else Does this mean the entire OS is loaded into memory? Is this a NetBSD thing?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoA "miniroot" is stored in the kernel, indeed the entire OS is loaded into memory. Other BSDs and Linux have used, and may still use, similar approaches in some cases. (For example, BSD install media.) This is old hat but reliable. What is amazing is that you still see people in 2021, when most computers have ample amounts of memory, complaning about "disk" issues, e.g., people try to use SD cards as a "hard drive" for RPis.
- bitwize 6y agoThe Raspberry Pi foundation wants you to use Visual Studio Code, which means you want to free up RAM. A file system on SD that's mounted read only on boot might be a good call, with /home on an external USB.
- 6y ago