10th May, 2016, 03:44 AM
I've been doing some experimentation of moving the $HOME directory to a Flash Drive.
As I test numerous different set ups, I wanted a way to keep my configuration without having to set it up each time I use a new SD card or release (All I need to do, was run a small script, and it was all done). This seemed to fit the bill, as I always have the HDD on an external hub, so there was an extra slot available.
As an additional bonus, it would seem that it speeds up media searches. With the same setup, on the SD card a 350 movie search took around 14 minutes, whereas on the Flash Drive, it only took 6 minutes. I would guess that this was because the OS was not in constant wait state because of IO.
As the Flash is formatted as ext4, I can easily back it up on Ubuntu (But could be NTFS for Gates O/S) without have to run the Xbian backup (albeit, I do have to unmount it first).
It also has the added attraction, that if the SD card gets corrupted, the $HOME directory is safe (and thus all of my main configurations (I have a script for the few system related ones).
I guess you could also extend this, by having the SD card as just the boot, FD1 as OS and FD2 as $HOME
I won't explain how I did it yet (Most savvy xbianers will know how) , as I have to ask one question.
1) Can anyone see any problems with doing this?
As I test numerous different set ups, I wanted a way to keep my configuration without having to set it up each time I use a new SD card or release (All I need to do, was run a small script, and it was all done). This seemed to fit the bill, as I always have the HDD on an external hub, so there was an extra slot available.
As an additional bonus, it would seem that it speeds up media searches. With the same setup, on the SD card a 350 movie search took around 14 minutes, whereas on the Flash Drive, it only took 6 minutes. I would guess that this was because the OS was not in constant wait state because of IO.
As the Flash is formatted as ext4, I can easily back it up on Ubuntu (But could be NTFS for Gates O/S) without have to run the Xbian backup (albeit, I do have to unmount it first).
It also has the added attraction, that if the SD card gets corrupted, the $HOME directory is safe (and thus all of my main configurations (I have a script for the few system related ones).
I guess you could also extend this, by having the SD card as just the boot, FD1 as OS and FD2 as $HOME
I won't explain how I did it yet (Most savvy xbianers will know how) , as I have to ask one question.
1) Can anyone see any problems with doing this?
