Problems with partition manager on installation

[BigalGeorge]

Amazing distro; perfect for old computers and general use.
However, I wanted to use for rescue purposes, permanent on microusb.
Prior install, I prepped a USB 7Gb ext4 1Gb swap. Booted sparky on another usb/install sparky which took me to install on HDD. Fair enough, but I selected Manual install/USB. Then I noticed the the bootloader was in a small box on lower screen as HDD - why small, and why HDD bootloader remained after USB had been selected?
Anyway, selected USB as bootloader, and proceeded to set up usual / and swap, but the interface to say the least on that installer does not instill much confidence as for a new user its convoluted and non-intuitive.
Due to this, and not wanting to crap my HDD, Ive opted for a non-persistent live on USB.
These words are not meant to be unkind please consider that developers you understand whats meant to happen, but it may not necessarily follow that others do. Its a wonderful distro with clearly a lot of hard work put into getting the correct goods for the job. I also used its Gparted (unsure what version) but that differs considerably from the Gparted Im used to and it was also a tad non-intuitive.
Kind regards, Al.