Can i make my bootable usb have a persistent storage after creating it without it?

Question

I created a bootable usb to live boot ubuntu but during setting it up i forgot to give it a persistent storage so that i can save my changes during boots , is there a way to do it without getting the usb back to normal state(unbootable) and re-creating a bootable usb with persistent storage? please help!

Answer 1

Changing Live Pendrive to Persistent Pendrive

This works both with BIOS and UEFI.

Many people prefer a Persistent Pendrive that will save changes;

• Create a Live Pendrive using Rufus or similar;

• Boot the pendrive toram to make the drive editable:

  Press Shift when booting; press Esc from Language; press F6; press Esc;

  Type a Space and toram after quiet splash ---, and press Enter.

• Create a casper-rw file:

  sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=casper-rw bs=1M count=512

  sudo mkfs.ext3 -L casper-rw -F casper-rw

(where count=512 is the persistence size in megabytes, with a max of 4GB).

• Move the new casper-rw file from home to the root of the Live Pendrive;

• Add a Space and persistent after quiet splash --- in the following files:

  /isolinux/txt.cfg, (for BIOS boot persistence Rufus);

  /syslinux.cfg, (for BIOS boot persistence UNetbootin);

  /boot/grub/grub.cfg, (for UEFI boot persistence).

• Shut down and reboot the persistent drive.

It's also possible to turn a Live USB into a Full-Install USB which has some advantages, except it won't install Ubuntu: Can Ubuntu be installed to the pendrive it was booted from?