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Persistent Ubuntu on a USB drive

I have followed the instructions on How to create a bootable USB stick on OS X on the Ubuntu site, and the boot image runs well on my Lenovo laptop.

The problem is that the image is not persistent: when I reboot the laptop, all the installed apt-get package and file in /home/Desktop disappear.

How do I create a persistent Ubuntu installation on a USB drive, which keeps its state between reboots?

Previous questions:

This has been asked before (Persistent Ubuntu on a USB drive, Can I install Ubuntu to my 32 GB USB pen drive?, but they are either old, or don't cover my case - creating the USB drive from OSX.

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  • Didn't you try Unetbootin by allocating space to preserve files accross reboots? Jul 2, 2016 at 9:18

3 Answers 3

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I see you are able to boot into Ubuntu. In that case you could then create a 'persistent ubuntu drive' from the live Ubuntu using instructions here or here.

So you basically have:

  • Flash drive 1: Made bootable from OSX. This you are able to boot on your Lenovo (but no persistence)
  • Flash drive 2: You want this as your persistent Ubuntu drive.

What you do is:

  1. Live boot into Flash Drive 1 on your Lenovo.
  2. Install mkusb on it.
  3. Use mkusb to turn Flash Drive 2 persistent.
    Done.

Refer to the links above for a 'how-to' on steps 2,3.

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You don't want a live cd. You need to place the iso on a separate flash drive then the one you are trying to install. Boot the drive and click on install, go through the setup and when it asks which disk to install choose your flashdrive and then you are done. Hope this helps!

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  • Will I be able to boot from the second drive? Can I use the same drive and partition it to act like two separate drives?
    – Adam Matan
    Jul 2, 2016 at 16:07
  • With a USB drive partitioning is not recommended. And yes once installed you can boot from the second drive. Jul 9, 2016 at 20:55
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With OXS a .img file can be written directly to a USB drive using dd or ImageWriter.

Sudodus has recently posted, a persistent image of LXLE Ubuntu, ( https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1958073&page=68&highlight=mkusb Post 672).

This .img file contains mkusb, so that once the persistent OS image is written to USB, mkusb can be used to create more persistent drives in the users preferred flavors.

There are other OS images available searching google.

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