Usually USB thumb drives ('sticks') are the targets for 'burning' a
(Linux) ISO to it, for use as a bootable 'live' (Linux) session.

Can an external USB-connected SSD serve that very same purpose, using the very same process of 'burning' and booting?

If yes, would that be a (costly, for sure) way to get a longer life-time (lots of write cycles when used frequently) out of this medium, as opposed to USB sticks?

Or is this a naive thought when -say - the ISO being 4 GB on both media and only these 4 GBs get hammered in just the same way, with then similar wear-down? Meaning the rest of the storage is wasted?

I ask this knowing about Persistence on live media and also about the possibility of doing a full install on to that external SSD. Both these options carried so many problems and caveats, at least according to my research, that I do not want to go that way.

Hence the above idea.

Finally, is thinking about an external HDD (instead of SSD) for the requested purpose even feasible?

I have used a few usb ssd external drives as media like any internal. I don't usually do the live usb, I install normally to the drive. To be sure you can disconnect internal drive the install to the usb.

If the ISO supports "burning" to a USB thumb drive, then it will work fine on an external USB connected SSD. In fact, it'll work fine on an internal drive as well, and this is sometimes called a "poor man's install".

In all cases, it will work just like on a USB thumb drive, which means that any sort of "persistence" features will work the same - requiring some sort of persistence data stored on a read-write partition or something.

Quintessentially, a "live" system is one that was originally designed for read-only CD/DVD media. The way the file system works is to have a compressed OS file tree on the CD/DVD, and to use a RAM file system that stores differences from the read-only image. This ends up using more and more RAM so it's not a great fit for if you wish to use the system long term.

But there are two big benefits.

One is that the compressed OS file tree is compressed, which is great if you're running off a CD or DVD or slow USB2.0 thumb drive. The CPU cost to decompress the files is peanuts compared to the slowness of optical media or USB2.0.

The other is that nothing needs to be written back to disc, unless you do some sort of "persistence". Obviously this is a big win for read only media, but it's also a win for old school USB thumb drives which had okay read speeds but absolutely atrocious write speeds.

Assuming you're using USB3.0, though, there's really no benefit. None at all. The bootloader quintessentially works the same as with a traditional install, so you'll have to deal with EFI or MBR or whatever just the same. In other words, you'll likely have to do that same thing either way (most likely enabling USB boot will be the extent of it).

Yes, I did it once for a Puppy Linux and it works fine. I was able to use it on a very old laptop.

Check out this link: https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tuto...l-linux-os-usb

If you have a Linux OS with Grub installed on an internal drive, you could simply copy the Linux iso file to the external and boot it directly as a 'live' system after creating a menuentry in the grub.cfg file of the internal Linux OS. Many sites available with templates or examples.

You can install Grub to the external drive (with BIOS_boot and/or EFI partitions) then create a grub.cfg file from the many sites available on line with templates to boot the Linux iso. You don't need a Linux OS installed for this.

You should be able to use dd and other software to create a 'live' Linux but that is pretty wasteful. You can do a 'live' install with persistence but, the simplest thing to do would be to do an actual full install but since you think that is too complicated...?

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes indeed "dd" will help, if he wants Linux to be mobile and got some extra pennies for ThumbDrive and SSD I guess it's a good one.

I have had a linux distro on a thumb drive a few times. And after about 6 months they would die - probably due to the high delete/write cycles for the maintenance of the OS.

So rather than having a full-fat OS I chose to'burn' a debian-hybrid OS onto my USB flash drive.
It had persistence which was a separate folder on the /home directory for storing files.
However after time I'm sure that flash drive also died.

So now I have a new PC with a linux distro on my internal SSD.
Internal SSD's lock onto the motherboard with either a SATA interface or PCIe interface.
Your external SSD is exactly the same as an internal SSD - except it locks onto the motherboard through its USB interface.

You do not need to 'burn' a linux distro onto your external SSD using the dd command. Install the Linux distro as you would normally to an internal SSD/HDD.
The external SSD has a USB interface so the SSD technology can be portable. Although it has a USB interface the external SSD is different to the USB thumbdrive.
If the SSD is big (e.g. 1TB) then you may consider partitioning it so that extra partitions are available for storage of files (or another distro).

Yes. It will be exactly the same as having a Linux distro on an internal SSD. But your USB connection will be slower than a SATA or PCIe connection.
You can get a 500GB external SSD with USB interface for under £35. It fits in the pocket like a thumb drive.

If you have a 32GB USB flashdrive with a distro on it - then the delete/write cycles made by the OS will be across the entire 32GB space.
Although the system files (root directory) are 4GB in size - the changes to these files will not be limited to the same 4GB of space. The whole 32GB of space will be used. At least, that's how I see it.

Ever since Linux introduced the OS-on-a-USB, this started a holy grail quest of having a distro on USB flash with persistence.
Thankfully those days are gone. This is because the external SSD with USB interface (which is what you have) is a little more affordable and allows us to install a full fat OS without any concerns of tweaking the OS to get extra life from the SSD.
The USB flashdrive and the USB external SSD are two different species of hardware.

An external HDD is exactly the same as an internal SSD. So yes - it's perfectly feasible to install a Linux distro onto an external HDD. You would be following exactly the same installation steps as with an internal HDD.
Only problem is your external HDD (and external SSD) have a USB interface. That's slower than SATA and PCIe interfaces.

Install ventoy on it? then you can have a big number of ISO https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

1 members found this post helpful.