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A few days ago, i burn ubuntu 21.10 iso to my Toshiba USB Flash Drive which has 16 gigs of storage. and my question is; can Toshiba usb flash drive boot 21.10?

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    Unless the particular drive you have is defective, it should.
    – user68186
    Feb 2, 2022 at 12:59
  • ISO is smaller than 16 Gb, so it should work.
    – N0rbert
    Feb 2, 2022 at 13:07
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    You said that you flashed the Ubuntu ISO to the drive. Then you are asking whether it would work. Did you try and face any issues? Feb 2, 2022 at 13:58
  • @user68186 It looks to me like this question is about upgrading to the latest version of Ubuntu which is on-topic. Feb 2, 2022 at 17:06
  • What kind of install do you want? a Live install uses about 3GB of USB space, A Persistent install should have about 8GB or more USB space and for a Full install 16GB is about minimum USB space. Please see my answer for further details. Feb 2, 2022 at 17:20

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Persistent Install vs Full install

Ubuntu can be installed to a USB in different ways. A Live install does not save between sessions. A Persistent install extracts the OS from a compressed file and saves data to an overlay file or partition each session, and a Full install installs the complete OS to the USB just like an install to internal disk.

Comparison between Persistent and Full install USB

Advantages of a persistent install:

  1. You can use the persistent pendrive to install Ubuntu to another computer.

  2. A persistent install takes up less space on the pendrive.

  3. You can reset the pendrive by overwriting the old casper-rw file with a new one.

  4. The install to pendrive takes less time.

  5. Slightly less wear on the drive.

Advantages of a Full install:

  1. You can update and upgrade.

  2. If you have problems or wish to modify, the solution is the same as with an internal install, (You can ask for help in the forums).

  3. No ugly startup / install screen.

  4. Better security, you can use full encryption

  5. You can use proprietary drivers.

  6. Swapfiles and partitions work and Hibernation can be enabled.

  7. Many persistent installs are limited to a 4GB casper-rw and a 4GB home-rw persistence file, to get more persistence requires persistence partitions. Once casper-rw is full, the drive will not boot.

  8. More efficient usage of disk space. Does not require reserved space for persistence.

  9. Faster boot, no automatic disk checking or Try Ubuntu/Install Ubuntu screen.

  10. You can run VBox and use virtual machines.

  11. Generally faster boot than Live or Persistent USB's.

  12. More stable, better for day to day use. I have run Ubuntu off a flash drive for 5 years making only LTS upgrades.

Note that once booted, both methods run at about the same speed. If the computer has lots of RAM Ubuntu should run mainly in RAM and there will not be a big difference between running off internal HDD and USB3 flash drive f.

Full Install Method

A quick and easy method to flash a Full install to USB can be found here: Easy Full Install USB that Boots both BIOS and UEFI

A more traditional methods for creating a Full install USB from scratch can be found here: How to Create a Full Install of Ubuntu 20.04 to USB Device Step by Step

Persistent install method

The following tools can be used to make a Persistent install USB: mkusb - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb, Rufus - https://rufus.ie/en/, Universal USB Installer - https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/, Ventoy - https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html, YUMI- https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/. and others.

mkusb is my favorite tool for making Persistent USB's https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb. It creates boot partitions that allow it to boot in BIOS or UEFI mode. It puts the OS on a read only ISO9660 partition that is difficult to corrupt. Persistence goes on an ext4 partition who's size is only limited by USB size and it will make a NTFS data partition so you can save data from a Windows or a Linux computer

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