How to create a Debian live USB with persistence?

I would like to use Debian wherever I go by installing it on a USB flash drive, but I'm not sure how to make it save the settings and be able to install/update packages without loosing them on reboots. So I downloaded a Hybrid ISO image from this link , and I followed the instructions in the FAQ : dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M; sync This command copied the image to the flash drive by creating a partition which size is the same as the ISO image (1.3 GB out of 8GB), and the rest of the flash drive is unallocated. I searched on how to do this, but every tutorial uses a different approach and some of them are outdated and talk about the old usb-hdd image. So how should I install this hybrid image on the flash drive ? How should I partition my flash drive to be able to install packages and save settings ? and how can I install this image without using dd ?