BT4 Install to USB HDD - major catastrophy

[neverminder]

I just wanted to write this post to hopefuly solve my problem and also express my huge dissapointment in attempt to install BT4 (following the official tutorial). My machine is HP Pavillion dv8 x64 (CPU core i7, 2x320 HDD, 4 GB RAM, Windows 7 HE). I tried to install BT4 to my 80 GB USB HDD using install to hdd "howto", during installation I specified the drive "sdc" which represented my external HDD. It seemed everything went smoothly untill the restart. The boot would stop at very beginning with Grub "error 17" or "error 21". The worst thing is that instead of writing the boot to my USB HDD backtrack overwrote my internal HDD's MBR. As the result of that I not only couldn't boot backtrack but Windows as well. While trying to restore windows MBR I messed things up further and ended up with factory recovery (major frustration, loosing 300 GB of data, etc.). I remember when I installed BT3 to the same USB HDD there were no problems at all, MBR was on USB HDD and so on. So I would like to ask someone who can understand this more than I do: what the hell happened with BT4 and why? And is there a way to fix it?

[skull-port]

Sorry but I think this is more a OP error than BT4. Open the box. Disconnect the internal HDDs, attach the USB HDD and boot from a live USB then use install.sh. Then F12 to choose which drive to boot (or config boot order in your BIOS) with the internals reconnected. Gparted or Super Grub Disk would have saved the factory recovery.

[sagaci]

before you tinkered further, you should have gone into a live cd distro (eg. ubuntu) and backed up your files)...

[crweedon]

Backtrack 4 Video – USB With “Full” Disk Encryption

watch video once, oh-ah, cool, pretty; then re-watch but fast forward to 6 min and 35 seconds into the video, this is the part where he sets up his bootloader, watch a third time with pencil and paper for good measure. also please use the search function before posting next time, as i'm pretty sure some form of this question has been answered by a few different members, a few different times

[Archangel-Amael]

While trying to restore windows MBR I messed things up further and ended up with factory recovery (major frustration, loosing 300 GB of data, etc.).?

They say there are two types of people in this world those who backup and those who will.
I would suggest that you learn a bit more about what you are doing before actually doing. Having done this would have most likely prevented the mess you are in now.
See also:
http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forum...ad-thread.html

[neverminder]

Sorry but I think this is more a OP error than BT4. Open the box. Disconnect the internal HDDs, attach the USB HDD and boot from a live USB then use install.sh. Then F12 to choose which drive to boot (or config boot order in your BIOS) with the internals reconnected. Gparted or Super Grub Disk would have saved the factory recovery.

Is there no other way apart from disconnecting my both internal HDD's?

So eventually I unplugged my internal HDD's and installed BT4 on to my USB HDD. I did everything exactly like the last time and this time everything is fine, after reconnecting internal HDDs both Windows and backtrack starts without problems. So my conclusion is that the ubiquity installation is flawed in situation like mine. Such was not the case with BT3, just to remind. Hope this thread will now help others in similar predicament.