UNetbootin/External USB boot-install mystery solved!!!

[Goldhedge]

If you want to use UNetbootin to install a dual boot BT4/XP (or along side with another Linux OS) and do it off an External USB drive (different from a pen drive)...

The External USB drive... must and I repeat must be FAT32 and not NFTS format.

Once I re-formatted my external HD to FAT32 and then set the BIOS to boot from the 2nd hard disk (USB drive), UNetbootin booted to the USB and I then was able to install BT4 to my HDD using the installation script, and then used the slider bar to adjust the partition sizes. All went without a hitch!

(I had only FLAC files on my USB drive and formatted to NFTS because it always stayed attached to my comp and NFTS seeks faster than FAT32).

Now I need to see about setting up a special partition that the separate installations of Ubuntu 9.04 and Backtrack 4 can both see, so I can swap files between both OS's. If anyone has some pointers about what I'm trying to accomplish, it would be a big help.

Many thanks to Lupin, Tape, Lincoln and Pureh@te for helping out.

[prowl3r]

The External USB drive... must and I repeat must be FAT32 and not NFTS format.

Brilliant, but not so loud!. That's extremely and I repeat extremely confidential information.

BTW you're posting in the wrong section, dude.

[fnord0]

(....) I need to see about setting up a special partition that the separate installations of Ubuntu 9.04 and Backtrack 4 can both see, so I can swap files between both OS's. If anyone has some pointers about what I'm trying to accomplish, it would be a big help.

if you are just running the 2 OS's on seperate drives and/or seperate partitions, on the same physical computer, both ubuntu 9.04 and backtrack 4 should have no trouble seeing each other's partition/data... if on separate physical computers, samba shares work wonders wether sharing linux => m$ or linux => linux, or the other way around.

for example:

• create a directory in /mnt called ...idk... bt4 (so directory = /mnt/bt4) when booted into ubuntu
• and create directory /mnt/ubuntu when booted into backtrack 4.

mount each directory like so ;;
mount -t auto /dev/xxx# /mnt/$directory_you_created

example: mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/ubuntu

from there, read and write to each directory as u please. to make it so you don't have to mount manually and/or type in the full mount command, put the relevant information into /etc/fstab ... this is all basic, basic linux routine, tell me if I misunderstood yr question.