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I had the idea a few days back to make a portable hard drive that boots Linux. That way I can keep programs with me. The problem is, I can't install an OS because drivers won't work between computers. I tried this with UbuntuGNOME, and I got ERR2ERR3 when I tried to boot.

After researching online I found that a persistent Ubuntu live USB will work perfectly. The problem is, none of the USBs that I made have actually been persistent. I made one with UbuntuGNOME and Ubuntu Desktop. They boot fine, and I can change settings, install programs, and make files. Then, after shutting down and turning back on, all my changes were reverted.

Any help with creating a persistent Ubuntu live USB or any suggestions for what I am trying to accomplish would be greatly appreciated.

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    Persistence works fine, see help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/… . you can do a persistant home directory as well.
    – Panther
    Feb 19, 2015 at 4:24
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    Do you want something like this askubuntu.com/questions/16988/…?
    – Takkat
    Feb 19, 2015 at 7:31
  • I have already looked at each of these. I have used a USB setup tool and gave Ubuntu 1GB of persistence and it didn't persist on reboot. In a few tutorials, it said that one has to enter Other Options on the Live CD menu. I have been unable to do that. In the GRUB 2.2 menu, I hit all the function keys and it doesn't take me to any Other Options.
    – Blaine141
    Feb 19, 2015 at 16:14
  • check my anwser here with LiveLinux askubuntu.com/questions/585909/…
    – Alex
    Feb 19, 2015 at 17:58

3 Answers 3

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A Full install to USB should work on any computer that a persistent install works on as long as no proprietary drivers are installed.

The best tool for creating a persistent USB is mkusb. It will build a drive with read only OS partition, casper-rw persistence partition, (not limited to 4GB), and if desired a NTFS data partition accessible to Linux and Windows.

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Bug 1159016 is still a problem on UEFI machines. On the live USB you created, you can edit the grub.cfg file yourself and add the word persistent to the Linux boot line. The persistence on your device should then work on both non-UEFI machines (which use the SYSLINUX boot code) and the new UEFI machines (which use GRUB).

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I have not tried it's persistence setting, but I use a program called YUMI from pendrivelinux.com. I use it with an 8G thumbdrive and on it I can boot ubuntu 14.04(32 or 64) gnome ubuntu 14.04(32 or 64), puppy linux, clonezilla, and a few other utility OS's. The app, surprisingly works better on a windows machine or with wine, the native app is lacking. Like I said, it does allow creating persistence, but I have not tried it. Anytime I want to save setting(networking, etc), I'll typically boot puppy linux.

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