I have a work windows computer that’s locked down at admin level. I’m wondering if I can do any type of setup where I can persist files and such without having to do a full install
If you can boot from USB it is possible in many cases to do an installation to a usb device which then would have the persistence. An installation usb device does not provide persistence.
If you are only interested in saving files, that does not require anything but the usb flash drive. If you want the OS with persistence it does require installation.
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FedoraLiveCD - Fedora Project Wiki
On live images, you can include a feature called a persistent overlay, which allows changes made to persist across reboots. You can perform updates just like a regular installation to your hard disk, except that kernel updates require manual intervention and overlay space may be insufficient. Without a persistent overlay, the stick will return to a fresh state each time it is booted.
Ensure the livecd-tools package is installed: dnf install livecd-tools to have the livecd-iso-to-disk command available.
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I would recommend using openSUSE Tumbleweed (any DE; I use Xfce)'s LiveUSB images as they’re up-to-date (rolling) and have persistence by-default even after writing it to a USB with dd. It makes a nice USB drive to have lying around!
And the disk is encrypted with BitLocker?
It would be an error to not be using BitLocker on a work Windows device these days.
If so I don’t think you can unlock the disk from Fedora.
You could install Fedora on to a USB-3 SSD and use that disk.
You will have a system that you can upgrade and install apps on as well as persistant storage.
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