I use the Pendrive universal installer to set up a bootable USB drive with Linux. It will run BOINC without any hardrive and without actually installing on the computer. It will run as a live version. I use a 4gb persistent file on a 16gb USB. I have not tried moving it to different machines, but it might work. I may try it when I get another machine.
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I use Linux Mint, But I agree with gta198. I tried Puppy Linux and liked it but eventually settled on Mint. But Puppy has a very small footprint and will work nicely with BOINC.
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Well, I did that. A while back I shut down one of my 8 core machines which had been running on a live Linux instance off of a flash drive. After I let the queue run out, I shut down the machine and move the flash drive to a new 12core/24 thread machine. It started OK, gave some messages about re-configuring memory and started BOINC. I re-enabled "Allow new tasks" and proceeded to download new tasks and it has been running ever since. As far as my machine statistics go, it shows as the same machine, with the old 8 core statistics and then with the new statistics just continuing on. Theoretically I could move it to as many machines as I want until the flash drive gives up the ghost. As far as installing it to a drive, these machines run with no hard drive installed.
Edit: Come to think of it, I did the same thing with one of my hard drives also. It was also running Linux. That first machine's power supply went belly up (it was an 8 core) and I just moved the hard drive to another machine and it took right off. I don't remember if any of the existing work units errored out or if they all finished fine. But the new machine just took over the old machines statistics as well.
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Thanks for all the responses.

It varies... Sometimes days, sometimes months, depending on what direction its going (New-> deployment; old -> re-purpose or disposal). With the supply chain issues of late some new things are sticking around for 60-90 days on the new side waiting for various things. Anything over a week is generally worth 10 min to put a quick install on it for 6-8 core hosts. For 32+ core hosts I will try to get WCG running if they will stick around for more than a weekend.

Sometimes these systems don't yet have drives or have a PITA RAID array, or require external DAS. For bigger boxes that might be around for a couple weeks to config, They may be running for setup in the day, but available to crunch from Friday night until Monday AM.... a good use of 64-128 cores over the weekend

BILD (Bonic Italy Linux Distro) works well, but it still required some touch, and the options set do not survive a reboot in their live image. I will check out Mint and Puppy to see if I can make that work.

On new gear you quickly learn if the PSU and fans are good. Have found lots of faulty fans or shady PSUs this way. 20x 6c/12t Xeon 3.8Ghz (latest) add about 2.2kW electrical load and heat to a room so definitely need to check electrical and HVAC before doing this. I have several systems with dual EYPC 7H12 (2x 64c/128t @ 2.6Ghz) somewhere in the supply chain.... Can't wait to try those on WCG if I can find the power to feed them and room with cooling to house them.

The new EPYC 7H12 has a rated TDP of 280W, and as a result the chip is being marketed for server environments that offer liquid cooled solutions only. AMD is very specific about this, especially in the market for which this CPU is aimed at.

Is that server water-cooled in the server or installed in a rack that has water cooled-doors? Should be an interesting setup. Would probably need a minimum of 256GB memory to run WCG. Might be able to squeak by with 128GB if running OPN1 only on all 256 threads not to mention the slots and swap storage required on the USB drive.