How to create a persistent 17.3 image on a USB flash drive?

[Lynwood]

Hello, all,

I've made a bootable image of 17.3 on a flash drive. That's easy and works fine. But I can't make lasting modifications, as with updates. How do I do that? I haven't found instructions for that on the 'net. One person in a chat room suggested that I install it on the flash drive exactly as I would on a hard drive; is that possible?

Thanks for your help.

Ray

[supertuxkart]

I didon't try by myself, because i am aware it will shorten quickly the hardware life.
But in many posts in several forums, users say to have installed linux O.S. in pendrives without any issues ( and external HD also ).
So i believe it's possible.

[austin.texas]

Yes, it is certainly possible to install Mint to a USB drive, but, as supertuxkart mentioned, flash drives are more fragile than hard drives, and wear out faster.
You can use the live Mint USB that you have, and add a separate partition for "persistence". I suspect that would not wear out the flash drive quite as fast as a full installation, because some of the writes are done to ram instead of to the drive.
Adding persistence is a bit more complicated that simply installing the OS → https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence

[SOCRATE_MMXII]

Have a look here: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=215020&start=0&hilit=persistence

Bottom line is that you can create a live USB Mint 17.3 with 4GB persistence file using Unetbootin or Universal USB installer.