Install Mint Linux 11 to small partition on large USB drive

Question

I have googled a number of websites to find an answer and couldn't find one that's helpful. I want to install Linux Mint 11 (just came out) to a USB drive. My USB drive is 34 gb. So I want to put a 1-2 gb partition on it and install mint just to that. Is that possible? I am a noob so I want to use http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ but the screenshots don't show an option for a partition or state any extra steps that might be involved in doing this (there's a tutorial for doing this for one of the Ubuntus using fdisk, but I don't have any linux installs right now).

I've seen several tools for partitioning. If this is possible, could someone recommend one to me? Thanks.

Answer 1

Tools like UNetBootIn and PenDriveLinux require just a FAT formatted usb drive.. There is no need to create seperate partitions.

If you want a seperate partition for Linux on that pen drive, you can create one partition for Linux and another for just regular data.. Use GParted to partition your disk. During creation of bootable USB disk, you need to specify the drive where you want the linux files to be copied to.

The easy way is to have a single partition. The Linux files/folders required for boot will be placed in this partition. You will be able to mount this usb drive on any OS (like any other ordinary usb disk) and create other files and edit them.. Just make sure you do not delete any Linux specific files.. (I generally use a seperate folder for non-Linux files). This way you do not need the hassle of creating partitions.