[SOLVED] Persistence with Ventoy 1.29 and Mint 20

[SmackDown]

Code:

$ sudo sh CreatePersistentImg.sh -l Mint-Persist.dat
[sudo] password for david:         
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 1.96581 s, 546 MB/s
mke2fs 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
Creating filesystem with 262144 4k blocks and 65536 inodes
Filesystem UUID: cc5ff620-fc0b-4c4d-a1b9-14c8855698a9
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
    32768, 98304, 163840, 229376

Allocating group tables: done                           
Writing inode tables: done                           
Creating journal (8192 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

OK I have tried all the steps except updating to 1.0.30. I know assurances have made that there is no malware in it despite malware showing up on Virus Total but I need to be certain.

When I recreate the dat file which I labelled Mint-Persist.dat the file is not renamed but remains persistence.dat. I manually named it. Is that a mistake on my part?