USB 3.0 Flash Drive vs. 5400 rpm HDD for VirtualBox VM

Question

Based on a comment, I'm trying to make this a technical question rather than an opinion question--performance of two proposed hardware configurations.

I want to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows on my laptop. I'm doing some performance heavy processing that requires large files.

I benchmarked my 5400 RPM laptop HDD as such:

USB 3.0 flash drives claim to get many times that. I understand that there are various modes of read/write/seek and speeds vary depending on file size as well. Given the properties of the different storage devices, would there be any performance advantage to me running a VirtulBox VM from a flash drive VS my HDD?

Also, if I wanted to go dual boot, which would perform better, partition on my HDD or boot from USB?

Solution

Short answer:

Yes, a USB3 flash drive attached to a USB3 port would most certainly be faster than a 5400RPM hard drive. I've run Windows-To-Go from a flash drive before, and the performance is on-par with being booted from the internal SSD.

HOWEVER...

You will also burn up that flash drive very quickly. Virtual machines are very I/O intensive. USB flash drives are not designed to handle that kind of load on a long-term basis the way SSDs are.

Comments

[Moab]

you will wear out a flash drive (pen drive) fast running an os from it. Better off using an SSD.

[Giacomo1968]

This is all opinion based so this question will most likely be closed. I store all my VirtualBox VMs on an external USB 3.0 hard drive and never notice any issues. Works fine. I do this not for speed as much as I do not want to clutter up my main system drive with that stuff. Saves space and makes core system backup much easier and take up less. I would never run anything like this off of a USB flash drive. They are not designed for usage like this.

[abalter]

Thanks. I see what you mean about opinion-based. I think I can rephrase it to be a question about performance expectations. That would make your answers appropriate--particularly about wearing out the USB with that kind of use.

[abalter]

@Moab Some manufacturers offer "lifetime warranties." Is that bogus? I guess it doesn't matter either way if I lose my data.

[abalter]

@JakeGould Maybe if I'm really worried about speed, I could use an external SSD. I'd certainly like to be at least as fast as native HDD. Will be doing performance operations. Just curious--why exactly is a USB drive unsuited for that? Are they really just designed for storage, not real-time use?

[Giacomo1968]

@abalter USB flash drives are just not designed for real time use like that. Maybe some of them out there nowadays are more stable than others, but in general, I would trust a cheap hard drive or SSD over a USB flash drive for high I/O usage tasks like this.

[abalter]

Thanks all--found this great explanation of USB Pendrive VS SSD: superuser.com/questions/919058/…