Here’s the basics of my set up for what I can bring around:
- A Crucial 1TB M.2 Drive
- A M.2 Drive Enclosure that has USB 3.1 Gen 2 output So with these together are desktop performance in a small thing. It is not a flash drive that just gets ruined in like 3 months of constant use.
And with these, I use a Ventoy set up called Medicat. I love it, and there’s no issue with it for me, besides that Medicat/Microsoft requires NTFS for Windows stuff. Aside from standard NTFS bullshit, it’s wonderful.
Since I have so much space, I had the idea of storing a Linux set up for on the go use on any laptop/computer without needing to sign into 10 websites for one time use. Here’s my two methods of how to do it:
- Make a persistent data block for Fedora/Ubuntu/etc. and make a Live ISO point to it, then boot from Ventoy into the ISO, which then handles mounting the “drive”.
- Clear a space on the drive, install a distro like Fedora/Debian and encrypt it, allowing me to just run
apt upgradeand move on like a normal PC.
Here’s the upsides and downsides to both that I can see, just thinking about it.
Persistence:
- ✅ Don’t need to fuck with partitions of NTFS, last time I tried to shrink the drive NTFS had a breakdown and I couldn’t fix it.
- ✅ Can expand the persistence as time goes on
- ❌ NTFS constantly has issues with me, where I can cleanly eject the drive but I need to run
ntfsfixto make it work again, and I don’t know when that will happen in the future. - ❓ Not sure how it will go with Arch Linux, but that might be a bad choice for a drive I boot into for fun/infrequently.
Partition and full install:
- ✅ Easier to just get going, point an ISO to install there and good to go.
- ✅ Easier to upgrade to new packages/editions, instead of downloading new ISOs and pointing it each time. I’m unsure if it would let me use a .dat file from Fedora 36 for Fedora 40, for example.
- ✅ I can encrypt it so I don’t need to worry about people nabbing it and messing with personal files.
- ✅ I can use something like ext4 or btrfs, so I don’t need to rely on NTFS.
- ❌ Trying to resize NTFS was really fucky, and felt like I was breaking something. I did break it, and had to reinstall Medicat/Ventoy.
- ❓ I’m unsure of how to boot from it and keep Medicat/Ventoy as the main option. Maybe create a file on Ventoy to boot the distro? Maybe it varies from BIOS to BIOS?
Wanting to hear the thoughts from people smarter than me, maybe have done this before. I just want to make it clear It’s not a USB flash drive, this won’t break randomly from one too many R/Ws.
I’ve done this sort of thing before but the fundamental problem is people typically don’t just let you boot your OS on their machine.
Right, this is for my friends that I have consent/approval from. I also don’t punch random bank info in public, and rarely do it on their computers.
It’s still a bad idea. If they have some really nasty malware installed it could rootkit your device, and vice versa - and you never really know. Just build a small portable computer (eg. Raspberry pi, NUC, etc) and use their KB/mouse/display.
Other peeps are saying just connect to a remote desktop you have hosted somewhere using your friend’s PC - don’t do that, you can’t trust their software/hardware.