Dear Hopeful Friends of Flash drives,

Finally!

Managed to format my flash drives by using 'easydd' a #GUI written by Barry Kauler for his EasyOS Linux, Puppy and also other Linux (theoretically for me at the moment)
https://easyos.org/install/how-to-write-easyos-to-a-flash-drive.html#EasyDD_frontend_for_dd

"EasyDD is in EasyOS, however, if you are not yet running Easy, you will have to download this utility. It is a script named 'easydd', and should work in almost every Linux distribution." ~ Barry Kauler

Get it from here:
http://bkhome.org/files/easydd.gz

Now I have EasyOS 7.2.2 on one flash drive and this is persistent. For example I added Audacity BUT EasyOS is experimental. Not really ready for every day desktop use.

However I also installed 'easydd' on Puppy Linux (see image) and that is persistent saving data on the USB Flash Drive

'easydd' also works with ISO and I installed #LinuxMint 22.3
and #MX-25.1 on two other new USB Flash drives
Neither of those save onto the Flash drive (they seem to want to just be run as installer images)

So I am making progress.  

Maybe someone knows which #Linux run best from flash drives? Mine do not allow me that option for some reason (apart from #EasyOS and #Puppy Linux