Best method for setting up Linux Mint on an 8 GB USB drive
Best method for setting up Linux Mint on an 8 GB USB drive
It seems you're asking about the purpose of booting from a USB and later storing data on an internal drive. The reason could be to transfer files, back up information, or test the system before installing software. This process helps ensure everything works correctly and provides a reliable way to save data.
You need to execute it in a live environment and connect the hard drive to Linux.
By default the setup provides a few choices for handling the installed hard drives. Choosing 'something else' lets you select all available drives. You can remove existing partitions on the flash drive and form a single ext4 partition with / as the mount point. Then in the drive selection you can switch to the HDD, choose one of its partitions to format as ext4 or keep it as NTFS and mount under /home, which is typically where you'll store your files. The process will alert you about the absence of a swap partition; however, I wouldn't enable swap on a USB drive. If required, you can later add a swap file and store it on the HDD.
If the installation guide becomes unclear, feel free to share your thoughts—I'll be here.
The flash drives will likely be /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc assuming you only have 1 hard drive in the system, which will be /dev/sda with /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 etc being its partitions.