"persistence" on a flash drive

[Rick Miller]

Was wondering why you can only get 4049(or a bit less) mb's of persistence on a flashdrive(fat32). And, if you format to NTFS you don't get "persistence". Now, lastly, is there any way to increase "persistence", so that I may use the full 7.4 Gb's of the falshdrive?

Rick

 

[cliffordcooley]

I had to do a search to figure out what persistence was. After finding out, I understand why the limitation. FAT32 is limited to file sizes of 4GB. You will need to use a different format other than FAT32. The person I quoted below used EXT4 partition. I don't use Linux so I don't understand everything. I do however understand the FAT32 limitation.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/397481/how-to-make-a-persistent-live-ubuntu-usb-with-more-than-4gb

The current Unix USB Installers (e.g. Universal USB Installer from PenDriveLinux.com) create a persistent file on the boot partition together with the other files needed for booting. This boot partition is formatted with FAT32 and because of limitations in FAT32, the maximum size of this file is 4GB. To have more persistent storage, this file can be replaced by a partition. The size of such a partition is only limited by the size of the USB drive.

I used the GParted partition manager to resize the FAT32 partition and make space for a big EXT4 partition for the persistent storage. The persistent file can simply be deleted and at the next boot, the Ubuntu system will automatically use the bigger persistent partition. There is one complication, though: you need another Ubuntu system to do this because Ubuntu cannot modify its own active boot partition.

 

[Rick Miller]

RE: cliffordcooley

Thank You for your response. As I suspected, FAT32 was the culprit for the slightly less than 4 Gb's of persistence. Also, the link you provided is due another KUDOS!!! I believe I can now amend my drive to suit my tastes.
(y)Rick

 

[DelJo63]

There's a good HOW-TO here

 

[Rick Miller]

There's a good HOW-TO here

Thank You jobeard:

OK, very good tutoriail however, I have a problem with this; I'm running "live" via pendrive and , unless I'm wrong, MSWin will not recognize and Ext. format(?) I was thinking about 1 possible(?) solution; format to NTFS and "install" linux distro to pendrive. A full install, I believe, will create it's own "persistence". I'm just wondering if/when I "install", what must be done to insure pendrive is "bootable" Ah....the headache's never end! LOL

 

[DelJo63]

Thank You jobeard:

OK, very good tutoriail however, I have a problem with this; I'm running "live" via pendrive and , unless I'm wrong, MSWin will not recognize and Ext. format(?) ...the headache's never end! LOL

I believe that the "persistence" you desire is ONLY available in the EXT4 filesystem. The use of "persistence" in this context is new to me, even though I've use Unix/Linux for years.

Headaches? Naa - - education

 

[DelJo63]

Back to basics - - "persistence":

• firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.
• the continued or prolonged existence of something.

By definition, all storage devices provide "persistence" :grin:

The Linux filesystem EXT2,3,4 are Journaling systems, and interestingly,

• NTFS is a journaling file system, which means it provides a way for system changes to be written to a log, or a journal, before the changes are actually written.

In that spirit, I would opt to format the pendrive in NTFS