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I've been wanting to make a USB stick that can both function as a normal USB storage device, as well as a linux live USB drive. I've been looking around and I can't quite seem to find a clear answer. I'm running arch linux.
wdhg
Posted 2017-08-10T01:05:42.373
Reputation: 13
Have you tried something like UNetbootin? You can put the entire distro on the thumb drive, as well as store files on it. That's what I've done a few times.So I'll put a distro on the thumb drive, and then I'll use it to storage files, on occasion.
– Ertain – 2017-08-10T01:49:49.770@Ertain Thank you for your response. I tried using it and it seemed to work, however I can't boot into it. How exactly did you do it? – wdhg – 2017-08-10T02:11:23.127
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Multiboot_USB_drive – Tom Yan – 2017-08-10T02:36:07.297
When you try to boot the computer (such as your average desktop computer) you may have to first select the USB device for booting. Usually, you have to push something like F1, F12, or delete as the computer is booting.
Now if you require multiple OSes on the USB drive, then it's best to go with what Tom Yan suggested. – Ertain – 2017-08-11T03:43:26.610
@Ertain I know I have to select the device to boot into. The problem I was having was that it wasnt booting after I selected it. I wanted to know how exactly did you partition your USB so that it both functioned as a normal storage device and a linux live USB. What I did was I partitioned my USB into two partitions, the first one being the storage partition and the second one being the linux live parition. Did you do the same? Also, I dont want multiple OSes on my USB, only one. – wdhg – 2017-08-11T12:14:44.397
If I recall (I lost that thumb drive, so I can't really tell you) I just put the OS on to it via UNetbootin, and that had created a vFAT partition which was accessible from Windows. I didn't manually partition the USB drive; I let UNetbootin do the job. – Ertain – 2017-08-11T17:46:57.527