Upgrading USB Live Persistent from 18.2 to 18.X in the future

[MaoMao2]

Good day,
i love to use ur beautiful SO 64bit in USB Live Persistet because i can to do all without the HDD (for protect hdd), and all work fine and very good (emulators, wine for windows games and programs, office, media player, editing, MP3 ect..) with a little USB of 8GB ^_^ (in the near future, fot Live Persistent, i will buy a 32GB).
When in the future will be out the new version of Linux, for me, will be better download the new ISO, create a new USB Live Persistent with "mkusb" , reinstall all and restore the backups (2,5 hours of time) OR to do a big upgrade in USB o_O?
In others forums, for others distro, someone write the is better create a new USB Live Persistent with the new ISO because with one Upgrade, all the system came instabile because the ISO is OLD and in the other partition we have much of new packages and all this make conflicts..
What do u think about this?

[MintBean]

To upgrade within series - e.g. 18.2 to 18.3 -> use the option that appears in update manager.
To upgrade to new series - e.g. 18.x to 19.x -> fresh install.

[Spearmint2]

I will add programs to a version on USB with persistence, but don't try to upgrade it. Even if that works, it just adds more changes that have to be made during bootup into the persistence file and would slow it down more. Best I think to just make a new USB with persistence. Something you could try is install the new ISO onto the existing USB with persistence and see if all goes well after than, since the ISO is placed into its own partition. Some added programs to the persistence area however may also need upgrading afterwards.

[MaoMao2]

I will add programs to a version on USB with persistence, but don't try to upgrade it. Even if that works, it just adds more changes that have to be made during bootup into the persistence file and would slow it down more. Best I think to just make a new USB with persistence. Something you could try is install the new ISO onto the existing USB with persistence and see if all goes well after than, since the ISO is placed into its own partition. Some added programs to the persistence area however may also need upgrading afterwards.

Yes, now i agree with u..
So i will do so, backup of all and Home hidden directory setups, download new ISO, create a new Live persistent, reinstall all and restore backup files.
TYVM all for ur info. ^_^

[fabien85]

Instead of doing a live USB with persistence, you could just make a regular install on the USB, with tweaks to the bootloading so that it can boot on any computer.
Advantage is that it's a real system so you can store and upgrade anything. Inconvenient is that it's less lightweight than a live USB, e.g. may be less responsive on USB2.0.
Here are threads explaining the method:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=252351
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=256750&p=1384976#p1384976

[Spearmint2]

Instead of doing a live USB with persistence, you could just make a regular install on the USB, with tweaks to the bootloading so that it can boot on any computer.
Advantage is that it's a real system so you can store and upgrade anything. Inconvenient is that it's less lightweight than a live USB, e.g. may be less responsive on USB2.0.
Here are threads explaining the method:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=252351
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=256750&p=1384976#p1384976

That works, but the problem with that is the typically slow write/read speed of flashdrives. A LIVE install writes only 1.6 to 2GB most Linux distros (Zorin being exception) and a fully installed will be 6-8 GB in size. Although there's a time loss in converting the encrypted system into RAM, that's less a loss than needing to read the larger full install on flashdrive. Also the LIVE system gets loaded completely to a RAM disk and the installed will do the boot and then make reads of the flashdrive as needed. Give it a try, one against the other, the difference is fairly obvious.

[fabien85]

That works, but the problem with that is the typically slow write/read speed of flashdrives. A LIVE install writes only 1.6 to 2GB most Linux distros (Zorin being exception) and a fully installed will be 6-8 GB in size. Although there's a time loss in converting the encrypted system into RAM, that's less a loss than needing to read the larger full install on flashdrive. Also the LIVE system gets loaded completely to a RAM disk and the installed will do the boot and then make reads of the flashdrive as needed. Give it a try, one against the other, the difference is fairly obvious.

I agree it's slower, I stated it in the post. In my experience it's ok on USB3, since it's nearly as fast as SATA, so comparable to an install on an internal hard drive.
Also there is the following post that experienced the loss of this speed advantage when including persistence to the live USB : viewtopic.php?f=46&t=257454

[Spearmint2]

I agree it's slower, I stated it in the post. In my experience it's ok on USB3, since it's nearly as fast as SATA, so comparable to an install on an internal hard drive.
Also there is the following post that experienced the loss of this speed advantage when including persistence to the live USB : viewtopic.php?f=46&t=257454

the problem in that thread, if you check his first post carefully, seems he was attempting to boot a 32 bit LIVE install with persistence under UEFI. He should have used a 64 bit version of Mint, or booted the one he had already on the USB flashdrive under Legacy mode. He claimed he was using a 64 bit version, but I noted this;

grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of '\cow'.
Installing for i386-pc platform