A usb drive can have a persistent home and opt by having the following in extlinux.conf
DEFAULT tinycore
LABEL tinycore
KERNEL /tce/bzImage
APPEND initrd=/tce/tinycore.gz quiet max_loop=255 waitusb=5 tce=UUID="b647c07e-d1f2-461a-9d4a-045b450ad1fd" home=UUID="b647c07e-d1f2-461a-9d4a-045b450ad1fd" opt=UUID="b647c07e-d1f2-461a-9d4a-045b450ad1fd"
Is there a simpler way? Without using sda1, as this may be sdb1 or sdc1 in another computer.