GoFlex Home, before I install...

[WarheadsSE]

I was reading all these guides and have been considering installing arch on my goflex which I'm planning on using as my main backup and storage device and was wondering why the guides all revolve around the install of arch on the main hard drive (I hope I haven't read that wrong )

Few things I'd like to get answered 100% before I go about relying on this for my backups

1) First of all, is the stock distro and firmware also installed on the main drive on a brand new goflex (ex. first partition stock distro second partition data) or is it all stored on NAND and the drive only used for storage

2)My general backup guidelines tell me to seperate the running system drives from the backup drives..this leads me to ask...

3)Can arch be installed onto a)internal nand or b) external flash drive connected to usb? if yes, is there any concrete guides or people who have done so? If no (or not a good idea) can someone tell me why..

WHAT I'D LIKE WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE....

I'd like my goflex to run arch from NAND or flash drive I don't require many packages at all, just simple SAMBA for file sharing, so if it can fit I'll do it and to have the main drive be a clean drive that's totally dedicated to file storage so that it is only read and written to when it needs to be and if the worst happens I just pull it out and recover on my linux box, I want my data seperated from the system.

I've poked around a bit tonight and possible problems I've skimmed were possibly not being able to boot off of USB (?? dont know if thats right), reads and writes will kill a flash drive faster(I can agree, but nothing stopping me from minimizing them), that copying and booting your system of internal NAND is dangerous (besides risking a brick, I don't see why once its been installed and finished) or is it that arch is too large to fit on NAND?

I don't expect you guys to hand feed me things and I probably didn't read deep enough but a general point or some solid advice would be great before I start trusting my backups to this device

Cheers!

[moonman]

You will have no problem running arch on a separate drive.

[WarheadsSE]

The install can be minimized to be shoved into NAND, but to be honest, with the nature of Arch, we're not exactly meant to set-and-almost-never-update the way NAND likes to be treated.

[ntba]

Ok so moonman, you're saying I should have no issues popping arch on a 8GB flashdrive and booting from it? Anyone have any documents on who has done this or should I just substitute my flashdrive in the setup instructions where it calls for the main drive? sounds simple enough

[moonman]

Yeah, just unplug your sata hdd and plugin USB flash drive for installation.

[olgunx]

It would be nice if there is a guide to tell how to migrate already installed archlinux on the Goflex Home's own sata HDD to a USB pen drive.
I have a 32GB USB memory and successfully dumped the HDD's 20GB partition in to it but no idea how to boot from it.
Any change in bootloader or so on?

[WarheadsSE]

Nope, just plug in the USB & remove the sata.

[olgunx]

Actually this was first thing I tried but I think I didn't wait enough to let it finish booting then I gave up.
Anyway, it boots fine now from USB when I wait patiently since usb requires more time to boot when compared to sata HDD.

Thank you..

[dangerousderek]

Sorry, I am a noob with linux and Arch, just wondering- I pulled the SATA on my GoFlex Home, and installed on a USB drive just fine, everything works great and I have installed some packages. When I plug the SATA drive back in, though, nothing happens. The light turns on, but my router doesn't recognize it and there seems to be no SSH. If you guys could let me know how to boot from the USB while the SATA is plugged in that would be awesome. I should probably also mention that my SATA drive is formatted NTFS.
Thanks,
Derek