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I just created a persistent live USB of ElementaryOS on a 32GB USB stick by following this awesome guide.

The problem is that mkusb should let you use the remaining space as an usual storage USB stick as stated in the community wiki:

The rest of the drive space is used for storage compatible with Windows

... the problem is that it doesn't, Windows 10 sees that FAT32 partition as unusable and asks me to format it. The Windows's disk management tool is not able to format it, change letter or anything else (though it correctly show me the partitions that mkusb has created in the USB drive).

I tried also on OSX and on ElementaryOS and I have no issues there, I can correctly mount, read and write in the storage partition.

Oneiros
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  • https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/ –  May 14 '18 at 05:07
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    my problem is more linked to mkusb, that’s why I’m asking here – Oneiros May 14 '18 at 05:29
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    I will look into the problem, and to be successful I need some information from you. [To begin with] I ask for the linux distro (Elementary?) and version, where you have installed Ubuntu. If this is considered off-topic here, I suggest that you post a reply at this thread at the Ubuntu Forums, and we can continue the dialogue there. – sudodus May 15 '18 at 09:03
  • Hello @sudodus, thank you for yuor response and thank you for mkusb, it is a fantastic tool! I followed the procedure from a live installation of Elementary OS 0.4.1 Loki and I installed the very same version of Elementary OS on a second, bigger usb stick using mkusb. I tried it again but no luck, Windows sees the big partition as unusable – Oneiros May 17 '18 at 19:20
  • Which big partition is unusable? Partition #1 with the NTFS file system and the label usbdata? It should be readable and writable by Windows. But partition #5 with the ext4 file system and the label casper-rw can not be managed by Windows, or should we say, Microsoft does not want to recognize linux file systems. – sudodus May 17 '18 at 19:32
  • The NTFS one, usbdata. As i plug the usb stick, Windows asks me to format the small 1MB partition, that he sees as E:... of course I deny. In My Pc I see E: as the only partition and this is what I see in Disk Management. The USB stick is the Disco 2, the usbdata partition is the Partizione 2. I tried to assign a letter to the partition or format it from here but Windows errors are the only thing I get... – Oneiros May 17 '18 at 19:46
  • I downloaded Elementary and let mkusb make a persistent live drive in a Sandisk Extreme 16 GB. It works like it should for me. I created a file in the usbdata partition. Then I shut down the computer and connected the USB pendrive to a computer running Windows 10 (which is up to date). I complains and wants to delete the linux partition, which is an ugly feature of Windows ('You should have no file systems except Microsoft file systems'). Our Windows 10 has no problems to mount the NTFS file system in usbdata, and it can read the file that I created a couple of minutes earlier. – sudodus May 17 '18 at 20:13
  • Earlier I have tested this in Windows XP, 7, 8 and the original 10. Today I tested in a current up to date Windows 10. If you let Elementary shut down gracefully (which includes flushing the buffers and unmounting partitions), the file systems will be healthy including the NTFS file system, and Windows should be able to read it. – sudodus May 17 '18 at 20:19
  • I am afraid that somehow you have damaged the NTFS file system. Windows should recognize its label, like 'Ripristino' 'Windows' and 'Dati', and it should be able to identify the NTFS file system and let you read and write files. – sudodus May 17 '18 at 20:28
  • This is very unlikely, since I did the procedure twice... I just tried with a 3rd party tool and it says that the usbdata partition cannot be mounted since it isn't the first primary partition of the pendrive. After some research, it seems like this might be the problem. Do you have any idea about this? – Oneiros May 17 '18 at 20:31
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – sudodus May 17 '18 at 20:34

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