Thanks eco2,
I had to give up on the persistent /home deal. It kept hanging the PC. The usb light
would come on and then I couldn't get any other programs to run or even log out. This
would happen while using Firefox, unable to get any sites to load was the symptom.
I'm going to try CTRL-ALT-ESC to kill Firefox next time and see what happens.
CTRL-ALT-BKSPACE would quit and try to shut down, but it would hang when
trying to unmount.

Using the USB to save a config works fine only if I use: myconfig=/dev/uba1, /mnt gives
errors.

Any idea why the /home would cause a hang?