Running Android from an external drive whilst connected to the box/stick

[bluesmanuk]

I was reading a few threads recently where an idea was put forward that running Android from an external drive may be useful, especially with the speed and capacity of SSD's housed in an external USB caddy.

I've no idea whether it may be possible but wondered if anybody has attempted such a feat.

The external drive would essentially be the sdcard and potentially have masses of storage capability as well as potentially faster speed of operation.

[Pluto]

SSD on USB 2.0 is worthless, you barely use it's abilities.

What you can do is get a fast SDcard, Class 1 i.e, and do the void.fstab hack that i have not tried yet (am on the same mission as you, just too lazy lately)

all i know is that Flumpster could help us with a guide, as he is one of the first that noted the utterly slow internal storage we have and he did experiment with this.

Basically, it's either SDCard or USB Stick, not sure which would perform better.

[bluesmanuk]

SSD on USB 2.0 is worthless, you barely use it's abilities.

What you can do is get a fast SDcard, Class 1 i.e, and do the void.fstab hack that i have not tried yet (am on the same mission as you, just too lazy lately)

all i know is that Flumpster could help us with a guide, as he is one of the first that noted the utterly slow internal storage we have and he did experiment with this.

Basically, it's either SDCard or USB Stick, not sure which would perform better.

I've used the void.fstab method before with a class 10 card and whilst it worked, it still seemed a little slow at times.

Using an SSD in a caddy with my windows PC, whilst it's not as fast as it is in a USB 3 port, it still zips along nicely on USB 2.

It would certainly be fun to compare methods of using a card, stick and drive to see which gives the greatest performance benefits.

I guess that if you can do it for a USB stick then it would automatically mean that an external drive would also work.

[Pluto]

I got a spare usb 3.0 stick that i would love to sacrifice for the box, but im way to new to the core of this stuff to try it out.

If you drop a guide here as well, id be happy to test it out.

Ps, dont sacrifice a 6 GB/s SSD for a 400mb link though ...

[Pluto]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/transformer-tf701/help/dead-mmc-ideas-t2830332

some happy comments there, should be worth trying, lemme know if you need a guinea pig