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I have a 128GB thumb drive that I want to partition for a startup disk and as a 2nd generic storage space partition formatted as FAT or NTFS. How can I create a USB startup disk, using only a portion of the total USB device's capacity?

Startup Disk Creator uses the total capacity of the USB drive.

karel
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Jack
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2 Answers2

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Creating a USB Startup Disk from Windows 10 with NTFS Data Partition

If you use Startup Disk Creator or balenaEtcher to create a startup disk using Ubuntu 19.04 or older, you end up with a ISO9660 read only partition spanning your disk.

For 19.10 and newer, you can add a NTFS data partition to a SDC or Etcher install from within Ubuntu using these instructions: Add NTFS Data Partition to Startup Disk Creator USB Install. A mkusb install is likely a better choice.

If you use UNetbootin or Rufus in Windows to create your startup disk, you end up with a drive that is FAT32 and is writable from Linux, Windows and Mac. Suggest making a folder named data on the drive.

This partition is readable but not writable when booted from the startup disk. Check the folder cdrom for your data.

UNetbootin can install to a partition on a multi partition disk. The USB disk can be split into multiple partitions using something like AOMEI Partition Assistant (free version) in Windows 10 or using GParted in Ubuntu. If formatted FAT32, this partition is writable from Linux, Windows, Mac and the running startup disk.

C.S.Cameron
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  • UNetbootin happily copies files to an NTFS formatted USB which then fails to boot. – James Bowery Feb 05 '20 at 22:59
  • @James Bowery I have not had luck installing to a NTFS partition with UNetbootin. If I divide the disk into a FAT32 partition and a NTFS partition, I can install to the FAT partition OK and use the NTFS partition for data. – C.S.Cameron Feb 08 '20 at 08:14
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Introduction

  • You mention the [Ubuntu] Startup disk Creator. This makes me assume that you are running Ubuntu or an Ubuntu family flavour, and that you want to create your USB startup disk from this operating system.

Persistent live drive

  • If you want a persistent live drive with Ubuntu, you can use mkusb. It works with all current versions of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu family flavours.

    You can create a partition for persistence with the file system ext4 and the label casper-rw and a partition for storage and transport of data with the NTFS file system and the label usbdata. You can decide the percentage of the remaining drive space (after the system is installed) to use for persistence (and indirectly how much for usbdata).

    If you run standard Ubuntu live, you need an extra instruction to get the repository Universe. (Kubuntu, Lubuntu ... Xubuntu have the repository Universe activated automatically.)

    sudo add-apt-repository universe  # only for standard Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa  # and press Enter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mkusb mkusb-nox usb-pack-efi

    enter image description here

  • If If you want a persistent live drive with Ubuntu 19.10 and later on with the next LTS release, 20.04, you can take advantage of a new feature and make a persistent live drive with mkusb-minp or easier with the new and very safe tool mkusb-plug.

    enter image description here

Live drive with storage

  • With Ubuntu 19.10 and later on with the next LTS release, 20.04, you can also make a live (live-only) drive with mkusb-plug, and use the remaining drive space behind the system for storage and transport of data with the NTFS, FAT32 or exFAT file system and the label usbdata.

Link

sudodus
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