If I removed the SSD (or hard drive) from the laptop, and then plugged in the Xubuntu 20.04 LTS non-persistent Live USB and turned on the computer, would I be able to boot into it normally?
1 Answer
Computer with Only a Live USB and No HDD
Programs like Etcher, Win32DiskImager, dd, Gnome-Disks and Startup Disk Creator, create a USB with a ISO9660 read only operating system.
However, since 19.10, these programs do produce a inactive persistent partition named writable
.
The drive will be persistent if while booting Shift
is pressed, then Escape
, F6
and Escape
again, then a space is typed followed by persistent
.
The drive will be booted persistent every time this procedure is followed while booting and will see the data that was there the last persistent boot.
The session will not be persistent if this procedure is not followed.
A writable
partition on a ISO9660 drive can be changed to a NTFS data partition by running sudo mkfs.ntfs -f -L data /dev/sdx3
from a second Live USB or while booted toram
. x3 is the drive and writable
partition of the ISO9660 drive.
To answer the main question, an internal drive is not required when booting from a Live, (non-persistent) USB or from a persistent one.
read/write
". Preserving system changes on this writable partition is left up to you.