Gfilui

Here's the scenario: I would like to use a live USB to boot up my computer sometimes and access large programs that I want to run in Ubuntu only. However, I only have access to an 8gb USB drive, and the programs I'm looking at are around 50gb and upwards. From my research, I think I have to set up persistence, but instead of saving files to my USB, I want to be able to save files to my computer without messing up my current operating system and whatnot. How do I do that?

EDIT: If I mount my hard drive, is there anything I have to do to make my programs install there, and how can I do it so that my OS settings are stored on the USB (So I can take it with me), and my large programs are still on my OS.

EDIT: Errors with mkusb

Drive that contains source file: /dev/sda
Live drive, that is booted from: /dev/sda
cands=2

 50G

 50G
built-in device
sdb
SanDisk_Cruzer_Glide
 7.5G
usb
USB or memory card
p_target: target=/dev/ 7.5G
No target device or bad target device
p_clean:

Persistent live with a casper-rw partition in the internal drive

• 
  

  You can create a persistent live drive with mkusb according to the following links,

  
  
  

  help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

  
  
  

  help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/persistent

  
  


• 
  

  Ubuntu will search for a file with the name casper-rw or a partition with the label casper-rw, and use the first one that it finds. So you can

  
  
  
  • remove or re-label the casper-rw partition on the USB pendrive (created by mkusb),
  
  
  • In Windows shrink the Windows partition (typically C:) and leave the freed drive space as 'unallocated'.
  
  
  • Boot live-only from the Ubuntu live drive, 'Try Ubuntu',
    
    
    • start gparted and
      
      
      • create a partition in the unallocated drive space and
      
      
      • in the partition create an ext4 file system
      
      
      • set the label casper-rw on this partition
      
      
    
    
  
  
  • Now, when you reboot the Ubuntu live drive, you should be able to boot persistent live and it will use the casper-rw partition in the internal drive. It should be possible to install your large programs and they are stored (automatically) in the casper-rw partition in the internal drive.
  
  

Test that it really works

As you can see in the screenshot, the casper-rw partition in the internal drive /dev/sda is 49 GiB, and it is used for persistence. The operating system is running from a [16 GB] USB pendrive /dev/sdb, where the automatically created casper-rw partition is re-labeled to casper-off.

You could probably mount the hard drive of the computer as it is.

To find what partitions you have on the system run

sudo fdisk -l

Then mount the apropriate partition

sudo mount /dev/device /mnt/mountpoint

You might need to specify type of the device. Use

-t type

where type can be ntfs or other file formats supported by your live USB.