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In my freelance job as "the dude that fixes your computer" I have an extremely handy tool, a bootable USB stick with Ubuntu LiveCD that allows me to recover and investigate in a known, working environment.
Now, I want to reformat this USB stick and reinstall with Casper-RW persistance. I did this a few times before with a FAT-formatted USB stick. It was a horror. The USB drive corrupted constantly, by people accidently removing the USB stick, the computer not properly shutting down, ETC.
Now what I want to create a multi-partition USB stick so I can put Ubuntu on a ext partition, but still be able to store some Windows stuff in it, by having a secondary FAT partition.
However I read somewhere that Windows will only check the first partition on USB sticks, giving a problem with the first bootable linux partition.
Is this possible on some way?
EDIT
Perhaps it wasn't clear what the problem is. The problem is that I read somewhere that Windows will only recognize the first partition on a USB stick. But I want two partitions, a ext partition and a FAT partition. No issues so far, but in order to be bootable the ext partition must be the first one!
Can you just skirt the issue altogether by getting a separate USB stick for carrying around Windows stuff? That's what I do... – Kromey – 2011-04-13T20:24:31.930
Yeah I could, but it would be nice to get them on one USB stick, even if it's only because I can :) (chances are I can not though) – orlp – 2011-04-13T20:26:13.417
I can't say for sure (hence why I haven't posted an answer), but I suspect the answer is that you can't, or if you can it requires some super-awesome third-party driver that won't be installed on the systems you're working on anyway. – Kromey – 2011-04-13T20:28:48.933
Yeah, that's what I thought too, but I asked anyway because perhaps someone has that little bit of trivia knowledge that makes this possible. Gotta <3 Windows supporting only it's own crappy FS. – orlp – 2011-04-13T20:31:59.420
Who said that the bootable partition must be the first one? – Skaperen – 2013-02-19T06:28:59.570