How I installed Lucid on a USB flash disc - WAS: Please, Ubuntu, do not embarrass me again!

[Colin Law]

On 9 June 2010 09:07, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On 07/06/10 22:33, Basil Chupin wrote:
>...
> This afternoon I installed Lucid 10.04 on a USB flash disc/memory stick
> (from now on called "flash") as I promised I would do (above).
>
> To start with, I did not follow any of the earlier instructions I
> referred to - I just installed Lucid as one would install it on a normal
> HD-oriented system.
>
> But there are qualifications.
>
> Firstly, all my computers have HD sitting in cradles. For this
> installation I removed both the HDs to ensure that I don't something
> wrong and accidentally wipe out one/both of the HDs with a "production"
> version of Lucid installed.
>
> Next, my BIOS is set to have:
>
> first boot device as USB-ZIP;
> second as CDROM;
> third as HDD-0;
> fourth as HDD-1
>
> In order to install 10.04 I reset the first boot to "Disabled" because
> the system will not boot from the an empty flash.
>
> Next I inserted the flash, started the computer and inserted the CD with
> Lucid on it.
>
> The CD booted, I chose Install - and installed Lucid as one would
> normally install Ubuntu on an HD.

I am not an expert and others may correct me, but I think one of the
issues with this is that if you did a standard install I think it will
have formatted the flash as ext3 or 4.  I understand this is an issue
with flash as the journaling causes many extra write cycles which will
wear out the flash.  I think ext2 is considered better for flash.

Colin