I recently installed Linux Mint on an Acer Aspire One for my dad, as he needed a Linux environment to fully utilise his data loggers for work. I quite liked Mint, so I looked at creating a permanent non live USB install of it for myself - non live as in I can change system settings and they wont be lost on reboot, store files etc. I am using an 8GB SanDisk Cruzer Titanium, and I have made two paritions - on 4GB XFS parition for Linux, and one 4GB FAT32 partition for general use across all OS's.

I made the partition the root mount point, and didnt bother with a swap partition, as the main machine I would use it on has 4GB RAM, and the vast majority of others have 2GB+. I installed it via the netbook from a Live USB stick (which was how I installed Mint onto the netbook in the first place).

When I select the USB stick as the boot device, GRUB loads just fine, however upon selecting Mint or Min recovery mode, I get:

"ERROR 21 error 21 selected disk does not exist".

I am pretty new to Linux, so I honestly do not have a clue where to start with this. The error is persistant no matter what machine I attempt to boot from.

Is this type of USB install just not possible, or have I done something wrong during the install process, or am I missing something completely?

An help is greatly appreciated!

Welcome to LQ GazzaDJ
Hmmmm

you mean you want persistence?

There are two, three wauys maybe to have persistence on usb

but, a question first
why xfs partition type?

and which partition is fat32
1st or 2nd?

Tried installing livecd image on usb. It should serve the same purpose.

Thanks for the quick replies. From what I read online, XFS is generally the best file system to go for? would I have been better off with ext3 perhaps? The FAT32 partition is second.

I already have a working LiveUSB install, but when you reboot or power off you lose any changes you have made.

Persistence is esy
but, it's good you got 8gb usb cause saving your updates, etc can get big in any ubuntu based distro!

Now, two kinds of persistence

you could install as with hd, a full install to usb

you could make a casper-rw loopback file,place it on fat32 partition and save to that

you can also make a ext2/3 parttiion on usb
label it casper-rw, and save to that.


also, did you know somw windows won't let you access the fat32 unless it's the first partition?

anyway, your usb is set up with grub or syslinux?

USB is set up with GRUB at the moment.

Perhaps another way of looking at it is:

Is there a way you can make a working Live bootable CD not read only anymore, so any changes you make are saved?

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/usb-lin...ation-windows/

After poking around some more, I found this which is pretty much EXACTLY what I want. just need to see if it plays nice with partitions