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I booted into a 16GB live USB of 20.04 that I created in my computer's already installed operating system, Windows, and installed mkusb there and followed the directions given here for a separate 32GB USB drive. I made it through all the steps, except for the one that says "work done."

Now the progress bars have been stuck in their places and the command line hasn't updated for over an hour now.

Here's a screenshot showing the progress bars:

progress bars screenshot

I have a moderately-powered computer and I had no previous problems flashing the iso onto the non-persistent 16GB I'm currently writing this on in Windows.

I decided to try mkusb from a live Ubuntu USB after struggles with making the persistent drive with Rufus and other Windows applications. I chose 95% of remaining space for persistence because I don't imagine needing any usbdata space.

Maybe it's just stuck making that big 20+GB persistent space?

Edit: I'm debating if I should just take the USB out with this window still up and try booting it to see if it works, and wiping it and trying again if it doesn't - try using a Windows program again maybe... Would it be possible to stop this last process it's running (flushing file system buffers) without corrupting it or preventing it from booting?

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    FYI: I would always opt for official documentation over a much older 3rd party blog (eg. help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb updated 25-May-2020), especially on programs that are upgraded very regularly or very actively maintained (thanks @sudodus). I wouldn't remove the thumb-drive until all processes are killed & nothing is using it.
    – guiverc
    Jun 5, 2020 at 0:07
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    The instructions you used may be old, but they are still valid. I have stopped a mkusb install many times without problem. X out of mkusb and eject the USB safely. Do a full wipe of the drive using mkusb and repeat the "install (make boot device) option i. Latest stable release is 12.5.5 but unstable 12.5.7 is working okay. Perhaps at "persistent live drive settings" select "use defaults" rather than "upefi". Jun 5, 2020 at 4:39

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From the screenshot I conclude that mkusb is stuck (or very slow) during cloning from the iso file to partition #4.

This can happen, if the target drive has been used before, and many memory cells are already occupied. We must understand that USB pendrives are rather cheap devices, and the built-in management of the memory cells (how they are linked to the logical structure with a partition table, file systems, directories and files) can get overloaded and slow. Sometimes a USB pendrive or memory card gets completely locked, 'gridlocked', and then it is read-only (and cannot be repaired). Let us hope that your pendrive is only slow.

I agree with the advice by C.S.Cameron: "X out of mkusb and eject the USB safely. Do a full wipe of the drive using mkusb and repeat the install ...".

Select mkusb's menu option "Wipe the whole device". It means that the whole drive will be overwritten with zeros (even the partition table and file systems). This will be rather slow, but chances are much better that it will work compared to creating a persistent live system. This wiping process will release the built-in management of the memory cells, and the automatic leveling of wear of memory cells can do its job.

So when you try again to create a persistent live drive, the process will be much faster. Please notice that you need not do any formatting before you use mkusb to create a persistent live drive.

You find more details at the following links,

Pendrive lifetime

Can't format my usb drive. I have already tried with mkdosfs and gparted

Wipe the first megabyte or the whole device

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