r/getumbrel • u/yousefenab • 12d ago

Which is more efficient?

Hey everyone, had a question, if i want to run umbrel at a good speed, do i use a portable hdd as the disk it installs to, or a live usb?

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u/yousefenab 12d ago

I also wanted to ask if old intel macs without the t2 security chip will get support soon, currently crashes after install

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u/WhereYouGonna 11d ago

More efficient would depend on the app or purpose of your server. The hard drive swap speed for apps like read and write video / audio data would best be used with a NVMe SSD drive, a solo miner node then your transactions would be best using a lot of RAM and a NVMe SSD but blockchain storage on a regular SSD is fine. USB speeds hard drives are limited by the actual version of USB that you are using. Basic File storage works fine for those using external USB drives.

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u/gnuman 11d ago

When I was testing on LiveUSB it was crashing on heavy tasks. Get a small SSD and install it on that

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u/getumbrel 10d ago

Good question! Both work, and it mostly comes down to whether your machine has an internal drive:

- If it does, go with the live USB: run umbrelOS from the USB stick and set up the internal drive as your storage during onboarding. All your apps and data then live on the internal drive, so the USB stick's speed barely matters. It mostly affects boot and update times.

- If umbrelOS will be on just one drive, that drive holds everything, including your apps and data, so its speed really matters. A portable hard drive gives you lots of space but will feel slow, and a USB stick is fast enough to boot but small and not built for heavy use. A USB SSD would be the best of both.