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I want to put ubuntu on a USB drive and have persistent space for storage. Do I have to use a program like unetbootin, or can I do it like I would with any other hard drive ? ie - install from a live USB drive onto another USB drive ?

Jimmy Widdle
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  • Do you want to install it on USB or you want to use it as a live disk? – Abu Shoeb Feb 02 '18 at 16:25
  • You can do it both ways. See the following links and links from them, https://askubuntu.com/questions/786986/boot-ubuntu-from-external-drive/942312#942312 ; http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2230389 -- A live-only system is stable, but cannot be modified. A persistent live system can be modified to some extent and is sensitive to corruption. Both live-only and persistent live systems are very portable between computers. An installed system is very flexible, can be completely updated and modified. It is portable but not as portable as the live systems. – sudodus Feb 02 '18 at 18:05
  • How big is the USB drive? How fast is it (read and write speed)? Do you intend to use the USB drive in different computers? -- Your answers will help us help you. – sudodus Feb 02 '18 at 18:16
  • I wanted to install it like it's a hdd. I think sudodus anwered my question. I went ahead and tried it anyway. It works but it's a bit slow. I got a 16GB usb 2.0 drive. thanks. – Jimmy Widdle Feb 03 '18 at 10:03
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    I looked at using unetbootin or the in house USB creator but I thought proper install was likely more reliable in terms of storage space. I didn't want some quirk of whatever methods unetbootin uses to create persistent space to mess up my data. And the Ubuntu startup disk creator doesn't have persistence. So my best choice seemed installation. – Jimmy Widdle Feb 03 '18 at 10:09
  • Now wondering if I can put steam games on USB, maybe use the steam OS ? – Jimmy Widdle Feb 03 '18 at 10:21
  • Your system would be much faster, if you get a fast USB 3 pendrive (even if you connect it via a USB 2 port (and even faster via a USB 3 port), https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick#Notes_about_speed ; According to my experience, an installed Ubuntu system works in the same way from a USB drive as from an internal (SATA) drive. But the size (16 GB) might be too small, and the USB 2 connection is probably too slow for some games. Anyway, it is worth trying :-) – sudodus Feb 04 '18 at 14:19
  • USB 3 faster in USB 2 port, ahh, didn't know that thanks that might help because it's an old USB 2 motherboard. – Jimmy Widdle Feb 05 '18 at 08:36
  • The reason why a fast USB 3 pendrive is faster [than a USB 2 pendrive] in USB 2 port is that the memory hardware is often the bottleneck, it is slower than the USB communication. – sudodus Feb 06 '18 at 08:20

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