Windows XP + Mediaportal in a USB drive

[Gixxer]

Hi !! after suffering the noise of the hard drive in my htpc i started thinking if it was possible to run everything from a 2 or 4 gb USB memory drive.

i know its possible to have XP booting from a USB as i have read about it from google so the idea would be to include also mp in the drive.

this way we could benefit from two things, reduction of noise, less heat created inside our cases.

in my case i have a server where all series, movies and music is stored so the htpc only needs to run win xp + mp and then access everything using LAN.


is this possible? anyone interested?

[gxtracker]

It's possible. hobbiest building carputers have been using flash storage for their systems for years - but there a few potential problems you need to be aware of before you start:

1) If you use a USB drive, make sure your mobo can boot from USB. Some mobo's cannot - so if yours cant, you'll have to look at using something like a Compact Flash card and an IDE converter.

2) Flash memory only has a finite number of writes it can perform, then the drive is no good anymore. At the very most you're looking at 100,000 write cycles in the life of a flash stick - which will only be a few years of use when you consider how much windows reads/writes data just by booting up.

A solution to this is to make the drive a HORM (hibernate once, resume many) - meaning that you create the drive the way you want on a regular HDD, then transfer the OS to the flash drive and lock the OS so that when it turns on, it only resumes from a pre-hibernates state. this way it never writes files to the flash memory and extends the life of the drive.

But you have to be careful because programs like MP and others need to write log and configuration data to the drive, so you're going to have write cycles spent anyways which will drain the life of the flash.

Of course, the benefits are good like you mentioned: no noise, no heat, incredibly fast boot up times for everyting... but IMHO the cons just outweight the pros right now until the technology matures a bit more.

[Gixxer]

thanks for that answer !!!

lets have a look at the cons...

1) my computer does have usb boot up, so no problem with that

2) i had read about flash drives cycles but in my opinion if a 20 bucks usb memory can provide me with a cooler and more silent computer for lets say 2 or 3 years, then its totally worth it, think that in that period of time technology will improve so cheaper and better drive will appear.

so in theory....not so many cons, right?

the problem is i dont know if you can install windows xp directly into a usb and it will work, or if you need a special tweak version that there are around in the net.

any help/ opinion?



edit.
i just found this....

On a well-designed drive, this means you would have to write new information to the entire drive 27 times a day for 10-30 years before the drive is exhausted. On a cheap or badly-designed drive, the story is different.

[kenwonders]

This is outside of your question, but I would recommend you look at drive suspensions. I have a near silent drive (even up close) simply because it's resting on a sponge and not fixed into the metal drive bay. There are also rubber mounts that you can buy that will also hugely minimise noise.

I found this out by running the machine with the hard drive in my hand, at first I thought it hadn't powered correctly until I saw the Windows logo.

[Badsted]

I think Windows resets the USB devices when booting and does as such not support booting from USB devices.

But I like the idea and maybee someone has found a solution and put it on the net.

I know that there is compact flash -> ide adapters out there and they support windows boot, since it is seen as an ide device.

I will follow your experiments with great interest ;-)

Best regards
Henrik Badsted

[Gixxer]

Originally Posted by kenwonders

This is outside of your question, but I would recommend you look at drive suspensions. I have a near silent drive (even up close) simply because it's resting on a sponge and not fixed into the metal drive bay. There are also rubber mounts that you can buy that will also hugely minimise noise.

I found this out by running the machine with the hard drive in my hand, at first I thought it hadn't powered correctly until I saw the Windows logo.

i understand that drive suspension would reduce noise a lot, but my intention is to reduce drive noise completely AND remove a part that generates heats, that way less heat = fans can run slower as less heat must be removed = less noise again.

Originally Posted by Badsted

I think Windows resets the USB devices when booting and does as such not support booting from USB devices.

But I like the idea and maybee someone has found a solution and put it on the net.

I know that there is compact flash -> ide adapters out there and they support windows boot, since it is seen as an ide device.

I will follow your experiments with great interest ;-)

Best regards
Henrik Badsted

i know its possible to boot from usb devices, at least in XP, not sure about Vista.

i will give it a try when i have time, meanwhile if anyone has any info or has tried it themselves, please post info...