# Diskless Angel?



## Raithah (Jan 6, 2009)

This Christmas I got a new flash drive! Yay :3. The thing is, 16 GB > 2 GB, so my outdated one is now permanently stuck into my computer so that it doesn't get lost.

... which got me thinking. [Splashtop] is an 'instant-on' OS, which from the producer's description is defined as "fifteen or less seconds from clicking the power button to browsing". That's seems pretty damn incredible IMHO, but purchasing a new motherboard (and likely upgrades for everything there attached) seems just a little excessive to get a piece of gimmicky software. My solution is to [flip] my drive, partition it, install an nLited copy of Server '03 or '08 and make the whole shebang boot in _seconds_. 

Well, more like a couple dozen seconds, but you get my drift. Flash drives wear out, though; doubly so when said drives have been through heavy use over the course of a year. I was thinking of using [Diskless Angel] to boot into a RAMdisk, hopefully limiting the numerous writes/reads that an Operating System makes and thus increasing the lifespan of the battered, little drive.

â€”

*tl;dr* 

 [Diskless Angel] : is there a free alternative (not including the warez solution)?

Edit: Right, and the reason all this is running off of the flash drive in the first place is to keep any horrible mishaps isolated to easily replaceable components.​


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## WarMocK (Jan 7, 2009)

What exactly do you want to do with the OS installed on the drive?


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## Raithah (Jan 7, 2009)

In the end, I hope to have it function as a cut down version of my normal desktop for quick access to firefox or MSN; when the full complement of Windows services and programs aren't necessarily necessary. For the short term, though; I'd be happy if it just booted.


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## WarMocK (Jan 7, 2009)

Did you have a look at distrowatch.com?
They offer alot of linux distributions there, and many of them can be installed on a flash drive/stick. For MSN you will need Pidgin, a multi-purpose IM client. It should be included by many distros.
If you don't want to use all of your disk space available for the OS go for smaller distros, like Puppy Linux, DamnSmallLlinux, Vector, Zenwalk, Dreamlinux, NimbleX, TinyME, or Xubuntu. Just have a look at the top 100 in the column to the right and read the descriptions there, it shouldn't be too hard to find a distro that fits your need. ^_^

PS: Since you're new to linux stay away from Gentoo and LinuxFromScratch, those things are for experienced users only. ;-)


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## Koda (Jan 8, 2009)

If you need the functionality of fast starting and want Windows, you can use Standby or Hibernate. Standby (aka Sleep in Vista) will put your computer into a very low power state (turns off video, hard drives, etc), which when you hit the power button or press a key on the keyboard, it will 'wake up' and be ready to go in maybe 3 seconds? However, the computer is still technically on, and if you unplug it, there goes whatever you had running.

Hibernate is an option I use for somewhat 'instant-on' on all of my laptops. When it goes into hibernate, windows stores what it was doing on the hard drive and then turns completely off. You can power down your computer, move it around, store it in a box for a year, and come back and turn it on. The difference here, the motherboard will post and do all its fun stuff, then start loading windows. When it does this, instead of loading files all over the hard drive, it copies your session from the hard drive into memory. Thus, resuming your programs, and bringing windows back exactly where it was when you pressed hibernate. Most programs will resume without even knowing the computer was turned off. 

Depending on how much physical RAM you have and the speed of your hard drive, your un-hibernate can take a bit longer. I never really timed it, but its always less than 15 seconds (for me). To access hibernate in Windows XP it might need to be enabled first (you access that through Control Panel > Power Options). You select hibernate when you go to 'turn off computer' and when the box pops up, press the shift key. The standby button will change into the hibernate button. In some configurations the hibernate button will just by default appear next to the stand by button. This is similar in Windows Vista.


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## Raithah (Jan 8, 2009)

Sorry about the late response, there was a problem trying to forward subscriptions to my phone . Lame excuse, I know.

Anyways; Warmock: I've tried Knoppix and DSL on my flash drive already - I liek ma Windoze, though; there are a couple of apps which are both light on resources and specific to that OS (namely [XplorerÂ²] and [Bblean]. It's likely that there are alternatives to said programs in Linux - in fact, I wouldn't doubt for a second that there are; but it still raises the issue of compatibility with games installed on my main hard drive that I enjoy. Not to mention that I would be moving back to square one in terms of computer proficiency by moving to a Linux distro. They're similar to Windows, but not entirely.

Koda: Hibernate is what I use already . But thanks for pointing out to use the shift key, I had been using a batch file on my desktop to do the same thing for waaay too long.

The thing is, I'm not doing this for utility of it, per say. If I really wanted to boot quickly into Windows, I'd partition my hard drive, install a fresh copy of nLite cut down XP and use that - much less stress and effort, but not as satisfying as finding a way to install a full version Windows onto a flash drive.

Thanks for all your help, by the way, guys :3.


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## WarMocK (Jan 8, 2009)

Well, if you want to play games while running on the OS started from your external drive you won't have that much fun with Linux at all - Linux is not the best idea for playing games unless you use wine (and even with wine I cannot guarantee that the games would work).
As for file managers and shell replacment: you can get bombarded with alternatives if you want. I haven't used either of your tool, but considering that I get almost 200 hits for "file manager" on freshmeat.net (with about half of them actually being file managers ), and at least a dozen shells you should find a proper replacement. ^^


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