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I've read that running raspbian from an usb-stick can speed up your raspberry pi (as explained here). How to do this is clear to me, but I was wondering if it matters what kind of usb stick I'll use.

I know that you can test it by mounting it, but was wondering if it matters if you use a full size or a low profile stick. Because I would very much prefer a low profile one. Are there any differences in the type of usb stick used when booting raspbian from it?

Community
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vkjb38sjhbv98h4jgvx98hah3fef
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    Note that you'll have to boot the pi from the SD card, and continue operation on the USB stick. The pi can't boot from an USB drive – saloalv Dec 15 '14 at 08:19

2 Answers2

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The appearance of the stick (low profile, high profile, blue, red, or black) makes no difference to the Pi.

Use any USB stick which works.

joan
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Are there any differences in the type of usb stick used when booting raspbian from it?

No. The only thing that's going to make a significant difference would be speed, and the hard deck there is determined by the pi itself, not the stick, presuming it legitimately meets USB 2.0 standards.

Of course, I can't promise that some sticks aren't made better than others, but the fact that we don't see manufacturers trying to claim "Ours is the fastest!" is a big clue about reality here.

goldilocks
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  • Ok great, I was worried that in order to shrink the size of the low profile usb sticks their functionality/speed/reliability might have been compromised, compared to their larger cousins. – vkjb38sjhbv98h4jgvx98hah3fef Dec 12 '14 at 21:21
  • Btw., I've read that some recommend using a 3.0 stick, for the extra headroom. But that doesn't make sense to me. Or could that actually help with speed? – vkjb38sjhbv98h4jgvx98hah3fef Dec 15 '14 at 19:24
  • I don't know everything, but it seems unlikely. The bus on the pi side is USB 2.0, and that has a max speed. A 2.0 stick should meet it as easily as a 3.0 stick. – goldilocks Dec 15 '14 at 19:32
  • Is the capacity (number of GBytes) of the USB stick limited? Would for example an USB stick with 512 GByte of capacity work? I am asking this because for microSD cards the Raspi (officially) does only support up to 32 GByte. – user1364368 Aug 05 '16 at 07:55
  • @user1364368 I don't see why there why there would be any problem. I've used a 500 GB USB hard drive with them since the first pi I bought 4 years ago and never had any problems (besides power, which shouldn't be an issue with a solid state stick); plenty of people here have referred to 1 and 2 TB drives. – goldilocks Aug 05 '16 at 12:22
  • @goldilocks In this thread it is stated that in general larger and faster USB flash drives have a higher energy consumption, so a rather big and fast USB flash drive (together with some other USB devices) might exceed the power the Raspi can provide via USB. (I assume your 500 GB USB hard drive had its own power supply). – user1364368 Aug 05 '16 at 14:05
  • The original models (A and B) are substandard in their ability to provide power via USB (I had to use a hub with that drive initially) and that may rule out a USB stick that needs the full 500 mA specified in USB 2.0, so if you are using one of those, find out the power requirements of the stick first. Note that USB 3.0 has a higher potential power spec and Pi's do not have 3.0 ports, but the later models (+/2/3/0) can provide at least 500 mA from a port if you set max_usb_current=1 in /boot/config.txt. I can power my drive directly from those models. – goldilocks Aug 05 '16 at 14:11