Need help installing BT4 on USB HD

[BushRat]

Hello to all

I got a decent laptop with "standard" OS (guess), and I wanted to install BT4 on USB HD. Reason for that, is that I want to boot into BT4 only when HD is plugged in, and not to install on my laptop HD. My bios is capable of booting from UBS, so this seemed easy...

- Booted from LiveDVD, clicked install.sh, chose to install to sdb. Formatting lasted over 3 hours (250GB HD), and still nothing. Reboot. tried to install again, formatting over 4 hours, still nothing, still stuck at 5% of installation.

- Booted up from LiveDVD, clikced on Partition Editor, deleted all partitions on sdb, and created smaller ones. Sdb1 was ext3 (with boot flag) size 50GB, sdb2 was swap with 8GB. Clicked in install.sh again. Installer didn't ask me to format the partitions, and it started to install. Great!

- Can't load from UBS HD, I get message "Error loading operating system". I don't know much about Linux, I installed GRUB on sdb. GRUB loads, but I still can't boot into BT. I figured that maybe GRUB isn't looking at proper partition. I booted in LiveDVD, mounted drive sdb, and BT appears to be installed. I edited menu.lst in grub directory and added "root (hd1,0)" to first selection, and now I'm getting this error when I choose first choice in grub: "Error 17: cannot mount selected partition"

How da H3ll do I make my UBS HD boot up?

[m0j4h3d]

man what do you want to do exactly .. if you want to install it on the hard disk so next step you mentioned is right..
and if you like to install it on usb flash memory, ok its easy ..
go google and search on unetbootin
download it
open it,,choose the operating system backtrack and select the iso image
thats all boy,so easy

[hypervista]

If you want a persistend bootable thumb drive (meaning any work or files you create will be saved between sessions), then you should follow these instructions.

[r083rt]

better option download linux usb creator

http://www.linuxliveusb.com/
select your thumdrive
select your iso
then select how much persistant space you want
you can have it to boot with virtualbox in windows if you leave the appropriate box ticked

[hypervista]

better option download linux usb creator

http://www.linuxliveusb.com/
select your thumdrive
select your iso
then select how much persistant space you want
you can have it to boot with virtualbox in windows if you leave the appropriate box ticked

VERY nice tip r083r7! I had not heard of that utility before. Thanks.

[parrotface]

Instructions in the HOW TO section work great
USB Live « BackTrack Linux – Penetration Testing Distribution

[TheFlyingDutchMan]

Instructions in the HOW TO section work great
USB Live « BackTrack Linux – Penetration Testing Distribution

This one does the trick 100%, installed yesterday on a usb-stick I received also yesterday and was able to fully use BT4R2. So I stick with this link.

[r083rt]

This one does the trick 100%, installed yesterday on a usb-stick I received also yesterday and was able to fully use BT4R2. So I stick with this link.

lol was able to fully use BT4R2. So I stick with this link
its called unetbootin which is another option
linux usb creator has the optoin of being able to save your data after reboot
persistant changes and has virtualbox hmmm which is better
unetbootin cannot do this well it will if you create a larger casper-rw
but its messy as it can cause errors with detecting floppy etc and other devices
but if you want to use unetbootin and create a larger casper-rw
just download the creator and configre the file to boot in persistant

your choice

[TheFlyingDutchMan]

linux usb creator has the optoin of being able to save your data after reboot

Didn't know, maybe usefull. Thanks!

[BushRat]

What I was trying to do, was to have full installation on my external (USB) hard drive. I was trying to create one partition (SDB1) as ext3 (240GB), and second partition (SDB2) as swap partition (about 10GB). I didn't want to do presistant installation, but full installation. I know there are guides on the home page, but it's not what I was looking for.
I found that my external HD is defective. When I was using mkfs command, it would hang at about 75%. I downloaded manufacture recommended program, and it confirmed my suspicion. Now I have to wait about week for my new drive to arrive from RMA.