Running Ubuntu off a USB drive?

Question

I was wondering if a USB 2.0 Thumb drive has enough bandwidth to act as a primary system drive in an Ubuntu Linux server. More specifically an SAN server. I am running an iSCSI target, ZFS and NFS-kernel-server, BIND9 (Slave), and Openldap (Slave). I was thinking of resorting to a thumb drive because my new motherboard only has 4 SATA ports and I have 5 disks. 4 (ZFS Pool) 1 (System). And unless I get an expansion card there is no way to get more SATA ports.

This "server" leans more twords a home server. I use in my lab with my VMware server. It provides storage, or atleast it did until it died.

Would it still be better to go with the SATA hard disk?

Answer 1

Sure, especially if you make the USB largely readonly. Do not place high volumes of write on it and it is just fine. Test it always of course - trust but verify.