Take the 2-minute tour ×

Sorry but my flasher is quite big. I wonder,I have some movies and stuff. Could I store them on the same flash drive after installing Ubuntu so that I could store them on the usb drive.

(I just want to store files in the space I didn't use (reserved space) to store my files and folders.

I am using windows.

share|improve this question
To close voters: This is not off-topic. Please read the first paragraph. –  Eliah Kagan Jan 28 '13 at 4:24
add comment

5 Answers

Yes, this is possible. But, I suggest you this following procedure to follow:

  1. First booting from a Live CD or USB other than the one you want to use as target disk.

  2. Use the gparted software a.k.a "Partition Editor".

  3. First create an ext4 partition and a swap partition in your USB disk.

  4. Then create a Fat32 partition on the rest of the free space.

  5. Start Ubuntu installation.

  6. Choose the USB disk as the target disk on the installation process. Also use the "Something else" option to select the root partition (which is the ext4 partition, you created already) and choose the swap partition. Then proceed with the installation.

  7. Make sure you selected the boot loader installation path correctly. For example, if you are installing to a USB disk, it might be /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc etc.

share|improve this answer
add comment

A Live, (or Persistent), USB uses the FAT32 filesystem. Windows can see and access files on a FAT32 partition just fine, (as long as it is the first partition on the drive).

Adding files to this partition will not break the Live install unless the Ubuntu files are deleted or overwritten.

If you need to access any of these stored file while booted from the USB, open filesystem/cdrom as root.

All of my USB drives have an install of Linux on them.

If you are talking about doing a Full install to the USB, use manual partitioning, (Something Other), and make the first partition on the drive FAT32 or leave it NTFS.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Yes, this is possible. You can use the Startup Disk Creator from Ubuntu to do that. There it is possible to write an Ubuntu image also on a USB flashdrive with files on it. But you should make a backup before ;-)

share|improve this answer
add comment

Since you're using Windows, you can check this guide to create a bootable USB drive on windows Or just use Universal USB Installer which is quite self explanatory to use.

After installing ubuntu on flash drive, you can put your files and folders in it without any problem.

share|improve this answer
add comment

No, user files and settings are not saved on other storage media in Live environment, unless you explicitly do so. E.g. – mounting the hard drive and creating/saving configuration files on it.

However, if the internal hard drive has a Linux swap partition on it, the Live OS may use it as a “ramdisk” for increasing the system’s performance.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


