Install Vista on a USB stick in three minutes

[shanX]

Ahem! Who has a 16GB flash drive?
Yeah, maybe XP.

Well am not sure, but I remember sm1 posted a XP USB edition here

 

[Anusha]

hehe.. well if u have a 2GB one... u can carry some 4.5GB of data... in it... with some liveCD like linux environments... with a compressed file system... if not u simply buy a external HD! haha now thats not hard to do??? hehe... and then if u get a 80Gig hard you can get some 160Gig data.. space.. with a compressed file system.. or if u want more speed u can just use the 80Gigs with out any compressing...

but there is a risk when u are using a flash drive... when u run a OS from a flash drive it tend to die very quickly than normally... so better opt for a HD.(i guess this happens cause of the constant read write...)

Compressed?
Now, that adds too much system overhead ne?
Besides, who has so much data to move from one place to another?

 

[dineitdark]

Compressed?
Now, that adds too much system overhead ne?
Besides, who has so much data to move from one place to another?

no soo much system overhead... cause this is compression/decompression built in to the kernel as kernel modules... so its on the fly... and not soo slow....

like if u are gonna use that as ur system, u will need that mem... it depends though...

 

[Anusha]

no soo much system overhead... cause this is compression/decompression built in to the kernel as kernel modules... so its on the fly... and not soo slow....

like if u are gonna use that as ur system, u will need that mem... it depends though...

Yes, it won't be that slow because the CPU is always faster than the flash drives (but depends on the compression algorithms and the level of compression). But can the compression in the file system make so much of a difference? 100%???

 

[The_Ace]

definetly not 100% Infact compression systems like these are not recommented for normal installations. They are meant for special cases like Live CD or Live USB envornments.
Main reason is that you cannot practically use a system with 100% compressed HDD. FOr example, if you have a 40GB HDD compressed to hold 80GB, then yo must have AT LEAST 80GB free memory to expand that HDD. Otherwise you're gonna crash your system. The Live CDs uses a special technique where only wanted programs are extracted in to memory but that can only be used if at the end of the day, the amount of data that is compressed remains the same. That's why live CDs cannot store new data or even changes you do over reboots.

 

[dineitdark]

Yes, it won't be that slow because the CPU is always faster than the flash drives (but depends on the compression algorithms and the level of compression). But can the compression in the file system make so much of a difference? 100%???

a liveCD(lets take it as 750MBs...) can have a compressed file system of more than twice the size of it self.. it works by extracting only the needed data to the RAM... all the linux live CDs use number compressed files systems...