Ubuntu – How to make a live Ubuntu 18.04 USB with a persistent storage of more than 4GB

bootlive-usbpersistenceusb

After many unsuccessful trials based on almost everything about this topic on the Internet, I decided to ask this question again. There is almost a perfect answer in this platform, but it did not work. That's why I am here.

I want to have Ubuntu 18.04 installed on my USB memory stick (SanDisk Cruzer Glide 32GB) with a persistent storage of more than 4GB (at least 23GB in my case).

I used MiniTool partition wizard to format the stick (NTFS) on Windows. Then, I used Universal USB Installer 1.9.8.2 to install Ubuntu 18.04 on the stick. Here, I tried to format the stick either fat32 or ntfs, but nothing changed. Later, I used another Ubuntu to delete the casper-rw file and create another partition with the same name by following the steps given in the link given above. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it working although I tried almost all combinations.

Can anyone give a thorough list of steps to follow in order to install it on the stick properly?

Edit: I gave ear to @c-s-cameron 's comment below and used YUMI to do that, and it worked. I believe all other answers would work, but I dont have time to give a try for all of them. Thanks all, again!

Best Answer

Syslinux type installers like Universal, UNetbootin and Rufus do not allow persistent partitions on the same disk.

It is possible to install a casper-rw partition on a second disk. It can be an internal drive or a flash drive or other USB device. The first casper-rw file or partition encountered while booting is used for persistence.

YUMI will allow you unlimited casper-rw file size on NTFS, it is a Windows app and uses grub4dos to make large casper-rw files. YUMI can make multiple Persistent installations on a USB drive. https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

For a persistent drive I prefer mkusb, (a Linux app), it can be installed to your 18.04 USB. It uses a FAT32 partition for boot, a read only ISO9660 partition for the OS, a ext2 casper-rw partition for persistence and a NTFS data partition that can be used by Linux and Windows. A mkusb drive is easy to customize. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to make a persistent live Ubuntu USB with more than 4GB

The current Unix USB Installers (e.g. Universal USB Installer from PenDriveLinux.com) create a persistent file on the boot partition together with the other files needed for booting. This boot partition is formatted with FAT32 and because of limitations in FAT32, the maximum size of this file is 4GB. To have more persistent storage, this file can be replaced by a partition. The size of such a partition is only limited by the size of the USB drive.

I used the GParted partition manager to resize the FAT32 partition and make space for a big EXT4 partition for the persistent storage. The persistent file can simply be deleted and at the next boot, the Ubuntu system will automatically use the bigger persistent partition. There is one complication, though: you need another Ubuntu system to do this because Ubuntu cannot modify its own active boot partition.

I used a 2nd USB drive with Ubuntu live. For the instructions below I used "32 bit Ubuntu 13.10 desktop" version.

Install Ubuntu live on 2 USB drives. Configure a small persistent storage of around 100 MB for each of the USB drives.
Boot Ubuntu from one of the USB drives. Make sure the other USB drive is unplugged.
Start "GParted Partition Editor" from the Ubuntu Dash. This partition manager is default installed in 13.10.
Insert the other USB drive, wait a short moment and do a refresh in GParted (Ctrl+R). You will notice that a new device is added at bottom of the list of devices. Check that the size matches with the target USB drive. Select this device (see example picture below, the device name can be different on your system).
Check that the mount point (/media/ubuntu/UUI) is identical as in above picture.
Open a terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+T) and remove the persistent file with the following command (adjust this command if the mount point is different in your case):
```
rm -v /media/ubuntu/UUI/casper-rw
```
Refresh GParted (Ctrl+R) and notice the change in "Used".
Right-click on the partition and select unmount. You will notice that the Mount Point is no longer displayed.
Right-click on the partition and select Resize/Move. Select New size: 1000. This will leave some space to store additional or updated files. Click "Resize/Move". An "unallocated" partion will appear
Now create a new partition for the persistent storage. Select the unallocated partition and right click on New.
Select file system “ext4“ and label casper-rw and click Add.
Check if everything looks OK and click on the green check mark to apply all pending operations.
Shut down Ubuntu, remove the first USB drive (this USB drive is no longer needed) and reboot from the second USB drive.
Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type the following command:
```
df . -h
```
Check that the Avail size matches with the persistent partition size you created.

Ubuntu – Making a live USB with persistent storage

I have an IBM T-42 Thinkpad too, and Lubuntu 32-bit works with the boot option forcepae.

I suggest that you install mkusb according to the following links,

help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/persistent

Then, with mkusb installed, you can create a persistent live drive with all current versions of Ubuntu (also 64-bit versions for newer computers).

See also the following links for more details,

how-do-i-make-a-persistent-live-usb-of-ubuntu-16-04

unable-to-boot-ubuntu-live-usb-flash-drive-with-casper-rw-persistent-partition

Edit: After a debugging dialogue, a bug was found and squashed. The problem was some confusing data due to a floppy drive (a bug that only affects very old computers).

A new version can be installed via the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The current update (2017-04-03) installs mkusb version 12.0.9

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to make a persistent live Ubuntu USB with more than 4GB

Ubuntu – Making a live USB with persistent storage

Related Question