Multi-partition flash drive

Mr. Macintosh · 03-09-2017, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcs.79c

How do I mount an external USB flash drive?

I'm a firm believer in the KISS principle. I don't want to fool with grub config files. Even though it's possible to have more than 1 distro on a flash drive that's not KISS. Flash drives are cheap. I can have 1 flash drive for each distro I want to try.

I'd say that I have 2 choices to try out each distro - Live Boot or VirtualBox. As was previously pointed out, Live Boot doesn't save changes. Live Boot is running from the flash drive & VirtualBox uses a virtual environment. Neither one is probably as fast as an actual install. With Live Boot I'd have to reboot every time that I want to try a different distro. With VirtualBox I can try more than 1 distro at a time. So, basically, I'd say that I have only one choice to try out multiple distros - VirtualBox.

I suppose that all of the major distros have the Live Boot option.

Specifically, I want to try Linux Mint, Peppermint, Zorin, Chalet.

I would just buy a few more flash drives. They've gotten pretty inexpensive over the years. You can get an 8GB flash drive for $10. You can easily get a 3-pack of 4GB flash drives for around $15: https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Stor...h+drive+3-pack

Or you can get a 3-pack of 32GB flash drives for $25: https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Attache-F...h+drive+3-pack.

Ztcoracat · 03-09-2017, 10:05 AM

Quote:

How do I mount an external USB flash drive?

Generally when the flash drive is plugged in it should automatically mount.
If not got into your file mgr and look for it there. Should it not be there look on the desktop and right click on the flash drive and click 'open'.

Quote:

With Live Boot I'd have to reboot every time that I want to try a different distro.

That's correct and you'd have to reformat the flash and remove the old .iso image and place the new .iso image of the next distro you want to try on the drive.

I use the dd command to make my flash drive bootable.

To find out the device name

Code:

fdisk -l

Than to reformat the flash drive. (x is the drive letter)

Code:

mkfs.vfat /dev/sdx -I

Unmount the drive

Code:

umount /dev/sdx

Than to write the .iso to the flash drive

Code:

dd bs=4M if=the/path/to the name of distro-x86.iso of=dev/sdx && sync

Give it a few minutes and your flash drive is ready to go.

Virtual Box is convient if you don't want to go through all that.
Unetbootin is good for a handful of distro's but I've noticed sometimes partitions or other things are still left on the drive so to get around that I use dd.

I tried Chalet and liked it:-
Haven't tried Peppermint yet but I'll eventually will.