Is a 32 gig USB 2.0 Flash drive spacious enough to use as an emergency boot drive?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been thinking... I’d like to use a flash drive as an emergency boot drive. The drive will have the basic OS (Disk Utility, Mail, TextEdit, Safari, etc), a disk repair app like TechTool Pro, DiskWarrior and Drive Genius and maybe one or two other useful productivity apps.

Is 32 gigs large enough for an OS 10.6.x or OS 10.7.x installation and the aforementioned apps?

I’m also thinking of using a similarly configured flash drive for use as a boot drive to run some apps that don’t work under OS 10.6.x and 10.7.x. Same quesiton... Would a 32 gig drive do the trick?

I know there are 64 gig drives for under $70 but in this case, cost is a factor and I don’t want to go with standard hard disk drives due to cost and storage (no place to keep them on my desk. Flash drives are much smaller than even portable drives.). If 32 gig drives will do the trick, then I’m set since I can get them for less than $25 each. If not, I’ll have to go with a 64 gig drive now and grab another one at a later time.

I know the flash drives aren’t going to be speedy since they are USB 2.0 but I think they’ll do the job. What do you think?

Thanks,

Robert

I’ve done it with an 8GB drive and 10.6. DMG is 3.6GB

Remember those apps are small. It’s the boot disk that makes them big. When they all share the same “DVD”
they only add about 100MB to the mix. DiskWarrior is only 8.5MB.

Have you ever seen the inside of Snoopy's house?

Low-end MacBook Airs come with 64 gig SSDs.

I think 32 gigs will be plenty.

Speed of flash drives is not a constant and some are faster than others, I use Mushkin enhanced Mulholland 8GB flash drives with a small 10.6 install and entire suite of various troubleshooting utilities. Friend of mine tried the same thing with cheap flash drive from Frys and it was so slow as to be unusable, he asked me about it and after switching to the Mushkin model he was amazed at the difference. Google search shows prices are reasonable for something that works.

[www.google.com]

I set up an emergency boot drive on a 16 GB SDHC card to use with my iMac. It still has over 7 GB of free space.

16 GB is more than enough.

Be sure you get a _fast_ flash drive--many of them are slow. I've been happy with the Mushkin Mullholand; good reports on some of the Patriot models. Or you could put a small SSD into a 2.5" USB case, if that's not too clunky.....

This one looks good, but a little spendy:

[www.amazon.com]

I've booted OS X off of a Class 10 SD card when configuring Dell Mini 9s. It's infuriatingly slow for general use, but for emergency boot purposes it's actually OK.

Actually enough room for several OS X versions.

I just did a get info of my System folder, and it's 4.9 GB. My Library folder is 11.91 GB. How would a 16 GB drive be enough?

16GB is ample, but the rub is speed. RAM chips are commodities, and you pay through an orifice for the companies to test 'em and rate 'em for you. Look at some sites that rate flash memory products; you'll see more consistent ratings for the higher priced/higher speed rated products... BUT, you'll also see ratings all over the map for the lower priced/lower speed rated products. You'll see some results for the cheap stuff that meet or beat their higher priced brethren. Why is this? Because you gotta pay the higher price to get 'em pre-tested. A lot of good chips do get into the cheaper products, and perform quite well; the caveat is that you gotta buy 'em and test 'em yourself to find out what you've got. I put dots on 'em w/ a sharpie to rate 'em, the use the speedy ones for important stuff. Also keep in mind that read and write speeds can be vastly different, so you may only need to concern yourself w/ read speed if you're not gonna be writing to it after it's created as desired. You're paying for convenience when you buy the expensive stuff.

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freeradical
I just did a get info of my System folder, and it's 4.9 GB. My Library folder is 11.91 GB. How would a 16 GB drive be enough?

B/c presumably with an emergency disk, your system and library folders won't be bloated with all the everyday stuff you use.

Even my everyday work imac has a library folder clocking in at 8.39gb and a system same as yours. So you must have a lot of extra crap in your library folder.

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__________________________________
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity

I wasn't quite able to make a 10.6 bootable system fit on an 8gb USB drive, but a 16gb worked great....

Boot... Nuke... Pave (from a network hosted sparseimage)... reboot. Done.

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Paul F.
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
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Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--
Eureka, CA

I installed Lion on a 32G USB stick.

Yes, it's a little slow, but not unusable.

Mine is a Kingston drive, and I doubt that speed is it's forte.

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You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

There is no safety for honest men
except by believing all possible evil
of evil men.

Pixels were born to be punished. -Frederick Van Johnson

Mister, that's a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.

I *love* Sigs. It's Glocks I hate.

16GB will work - here's the fastest USB drive I've ever had:

[www.amazon.com]

I don’t know what you guys are doing that you can’t get it onto an 8GB — don’t install Safari and Mail and language/localizations, iTunes, Quicktime, etc., etc.

It’s a repair boot disk. My USB stick gets 14MB/sec on the read. Better than average, but it was still a $12.99
stick from WalMart from back before December.

It boots just about 90 seconds slower than the standard Apple DVD, and WAY faster than if you make the
standard DiskWarrior DVD - which can take as long as 15 minutes to boot up your computer.

I have no idea what it is doing… but I don’t care either. Not when it has 6GB of RAM to play with, and takes
that long.

If I knew where it was, I’d post the screenshot of it. That’s the only bad thing about thumb drives. They
disappear a lot.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the advice! I'm going to get 2 qty 32 gig models. One to use as an emergency boot drive with a few useful apps. That way, at least I can perform repairs and, if necessary, get some work done in the event time doesn't allow for an immediate repair. The other will be for using older apps that don't run under OS 10.6.x or 10.7.x. The speed of the drive will definitely become a more important factor when I look at them again.

Robert