What's the best way to organize my USB stick for PenDriveLinux and regular data?

I want to install Ubuntu on my new 32 Gb USB Stick, but I also want to keep a fair amount of space available for Portable Apps or general data transmissions.

When I tried to install Ubuntu using PenDriveLinux, it asked me if I wanted to format and partition my USB stick, but I guessed I'd first ask here before experimenting any further.

So what should I do? Should I partition my USB stick or should I just leave it as one partition or make several?

Note that I should be able to use this with Windows computers and the file system has to be accessible from Windows 7, so I guess it has to stay NTFS. And bonus points if you can advise me how to add Hiren's BootCD and/or UBCD into the mix

Any recommendations?

Ivo Flipse

Posted 2010-10-27T02:03:50.240

Reputation: 24 054

Answers

You should partition it since it's likely you'll have problems using Ubuntu on NTFS. I'd suggest keeping a chunk for Portable Apps, and deciding if you want to use FAT32 or NTFS on that partition. FAT32 is better supported under Linux, but has a 4GB file size limit. I'm not sure if any of your portable apps has a requirement for NTFS, but they should run without problems on FAT32.

roguesys

Posted 2010-10-27T02:03:50.240

Reputation: 2 640

Lol if I need to use FAT32, I would need like 4 partitions just for my data... – Ivo Flipse – 2010-10-27T02:12:34.843

1Maybe, but remember that it's 4 GB file size limit. So unless you carry your data in large encrypted containers or as .iso files... – roguesys – 2010-10-27T02:37:05.457