Can somebody explain the mysteries of IT to me

Today is not a good day - one of those days where I am ready to pull my hair out.

I have 2 identical 16GB USB3 sticks that I ordered the same day and got the same day. On stick#1 I installed a persistent Mint system and that works beautifully. Then I wanted to test whether I could image that stick and restore it on stick#2. That worked beautifully too. But then the problems began.

On stick#1 I installed VMware Player and that works well as you can see here. Then I thought that this may be worth a tutorial and wanted to repeat the exact same VMware installation process on stick#2 so that I could make some screenshots. Mint has a very nice screenshot program. One would think that repeating the exact same installation would be a piece of cake - not so. The thing does not budge.

Then I install a screen recorder on stick#2 and although it did not like VMware, the screen recorder works perfectly. Now I want that same screenrecorder on stick#1. One would think that it works like on stick#2 - not so. It does not work at all. And that is a program I have installed a few times in different Linux distros - always working.

After over 50 years in IT I still don't understand why these things happen - like the other day where one of my partitions vanished from one minute to the next without me doing anything. If you understand the mysteries of IT, please explain.

Well that I dunno unless maybe the 2ns stick had a different format?

Today a customer was pondering what to change his password to - I said sometimes I use my Ex-Wifes first name followed by three 6's.

Nah, the formats are exactly the same. In fact one is the image of the other.

Wolfgang their has been times when I use a 3rd party partition tool I would have to reboot a couple three times before Windows would register the change.
Problem is I have no idea why.

Do you do reboots between using stick #1 and stick#2?

Sure, I have to boot from the stick. I run the system from the stick. So each time I switch sticks, I have to reboot.

Yeah, gremlins. LOL

Wolfgang have you discovered any thing yet.
It's very hard to give suggestions to someone with your high level of knowledge on such matters.

No Jack, I am still experimenting with the thing. I have 4 sticks now with portable Mint versions and they all behave differently. Now I am trying to create a larger casper-rw loop file which gets me into all kinds of deep yogurt. Unfortunately the setup program creates only a 4GB file and 90% of e.g. my 120GB stick is empty. And 4GB is not a lot of persistent storage if you want to put music and videos on it.

I did not really expect anybody to solve my problems. I guess I just had to vent because there was no logic to what was happening. Jimbo gave me some useful input in another thread on the 8-forums. He seems to know a lot about Linux. My problem is that my command line skills are very limited. And in Linux you always end up in Terminal if you want to do anything a bit advanced.

I have no idea how to help you with knowledge of such things but I did find something of interest. Then I will quite while I'm behind.

linux - What is casper rw loop file and why do I need it to make saving persistant on usb flash drive? - Stack Overflowus