Installing Ubuntu on USB flash drive [UPDATED]

The first tutorial of the series on Become a friend with Ubuntu Linux will instruct you through process of installing Ubuntu Linux operating system on USB flash drive. This procedure is very simple and very useful for people who want to start with Ubuntu comming from Windows and don't want to mess with their own computer or install anything on the harddrive.

UPDATED FOR UBUNTU 9.10 (on 2nd November 2009)

Using the steps below (or in video) you will be able to install Ubuntu on at least 2GB flash drive and than boot to the system on computers or laptops supporting booting from USB drive. So first of all go and check if the computer you want to run Ubuntu on supports this feature (you will find it in documentation to your PC or you can have a look at BIOS or booting menu during the first few seconds of computer’s start up).

As you could see in video, it really is nothing complicated. For the ones who prefer reading manuals ;) here is the procedure written in steps (you can find simplified instructions also on Pendrivelinux.com). You will need to do this procedure on computer running Windows.

  1. In first step I suggest to start with creating a folder (lets say on the Desktop) with name “Ubuntu on USB”. After this you need to download  ISO CD image of Ubuntu from Ubuntu’s website (this tutorial is for version 9.04 9.10 (both 32bit and 64bit) but will be updated as soon as new version is available) and installation file U904p.exe U910p.exe from the Pendrivelinux.com article and save both of them to the folder.
  2. Open the folder “Ubuntu on USB” with downloaded files and run U904p.exe U910p.exe. File will decompress and create a folder of the same name.
  3. Now move Ubuntu ISO file to “U904p” “U910p” folder.
  4. Connect your USB flash drive (repeating: minimal capacity needs to be 2GB) to the computer and note the drive letter that Windows assign to it (you can check it in My Computer). As you can see in video, on my laptop it was drive “i”.
  5. Now run file U904.bat U910.bat (or just U904 U910 when you can’t see the extention). Note that when you are on Windows Vista, you will need to run the file as administrator (right click on file and choose to run as administrator).
    Run as administrator option on Windows Vista
  6. When installation starts it will ask you to enter the USB flash drive letter (in my case it is “i”, remember?) to process and copy files to the drive. So type in the letter (just one letter, and be careful to type in the right one!!!) and press [ENTER]. Quite long installation process will start so go and make yourself a coffee or something…
  7. After installation is over the process will need to make the USB drive bootable. So just press any key when message appears on the screen.
  8. By now your USB Ubuntu flash drive is ready to be used, although just in case you have large capacity drive (more than 2GB), you can increase the persistent space of Ubuntu. It will make possible to install more software and save more data than.If you want that, just go to Pendrivelinux.com website and scroll down to section “Persistent size” where you can download casper-rw loop files of 3 sizes (2, 3 and 4GB as original casper-rw file is 1GB large). You just need to unpack the file to your USB flash drive overwriting the old one.There is new simple procedure on how to resize the casper-rw file responsible for the size of persistent partition.
  9. Now the last thing left is to test if your USB Ubuntu works. Leave the USB flash drive connected and restart your computer. During the start up go to boot menu or BIOS and choose the option to boot from USB.
  10. If everything goes right, Ubuntu Install Boot Menu appears. Here just choose “Run Ubuntu Persistently” (should be the first option) and wait for Ubuntu to boot up. And now just enjoy and play with it!

You are ready to take your system and files virtually anywhere! Just plug it in the computer (supporting booting from USB…) and you can rock ;) All the settings you will edit in the system will be saved. Including appearance. This is also good way to have backup system in case something happened to your Windows for example. I dealt with a problem that Windows crashed totaly and its reinstallation was needed. The problem was that user wanted his data back. I used this USB system to boot and copied his data to connected external harddrive. So, don’t hesitate, try this and leave comments!

Software used in video: Opera web browser and FreeCommander file manager.

Oliver Juhás 26.09.2009, 19:57 Linux