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dhojgaard
Asked: 2012-07-28 07:01:50 +0800 CST

Can i Install Ubuntu on my SDCARD and improve performance?

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I am going to do a reinstall of Ubuntu on my Laptop this holiday. I have an ASUS UL30VT, with no flash drive, and i just wondered. I never use my card-reader for anything, but i have a 32GB SD-card that i do not use really. I was then wondering if installing Ubuntu on that SD-card will improve my performance much? Would it be like SSD

12.04

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    By experience, I can tell you that running Ubuntu on a SD card is usually unbearably slow. You won't get anywhere near SSD-like performance. This is due to the read and write speed limitations of SD cards and card readers.

    Installing on a USB flash drive would give you at least equal, and most likely significantly better, performance.

    Please note that I am only speaking from personal experience.

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  2. Worth noting that there's SD cards now that have R/W speeds of up 260MB/240MB per sec, respectively: See this article

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  3. I have done this and the result wasn't pleasant(read: it was slow). The instructions I followed were:

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?s=5cc607fc26815ce5fd89bddee599b84f&p=11915401&postcount=22

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  4. Even using a class 10 sd card, the sequential speed would be ~10MB/s writting and ~20MB/s reading. That's not much compared to the 50+MB/s writting and 200+MB/s reading provided by entry level ssd disks.

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