BT5 R2 usb w/ persistence

[soul_786]

I've been fiddling for a bit using the guide on the wiki to get BT5 installed on usb with persistence.

Ran into an issue where I need to copy files from the virtual cdrom (i.e the iso image in vm) to the sdb1 partition I made on the usb key. Seems the 2500M of space allotted isnt enough if I understood the error message correctly.

This is from the wiki tutorial:

The first partition needs to be a primary partition of no more than 2.5 GB and set to type vfat (I have made this partition larger than needed so as it covers all iso's and future versions). Make the partition active to avoid boot problems.
The second Partition which stores the changes should take up the rest of the space on the thumbdrive, or as much as you wish to allocate for saving changes (5GB at an absolute minimum).

is 2.5GB the max for a particular reason?

I'm using an 8gb usb key, would it be worth upgrading and using a 16gb key instead with larger sdb1 partition?

Thanks for the help.

[thorin]

Ok your post doesn't make sense. First you ask about 2500M not being enough then you ask about 2.5GB being the max.

The tutorial does indeed suggest that 2.5GB is the max "primary partition of no more than 2.5 GB". The tutorial is probably written this way because it states an assumed minimum of 8GB and allocates 5GB to the persistence area. Since different people/resources will calculate the size of a GB in different ways using 2.5GB + 5GB allows some slack in number conversion, etc.

Lastly you never actually told us what the issue is that you've run into (was it just a matter of figuring out what the tutorial is actually trying to say?). Why do you feel your primary partition needs to be more than 2.5GB?

[soul_786]

No, issue being I get an error when trying to copy the files from said iso to the pendrive's 2.5gb partition. That error message has to do with there not being enough space.

What my question essentially here is: The size of the partition at 2.5g, is that a hard and fast rule for any reason? Or can I just use a 16GB stick, make that first partition 4gb, and use the rest for persistence? Thanks.

[thorin]

I don't think either the 2.5 or 5 are set in stone.

As a test before going for a 16GB stick you could simply try doing a larger primary and smaller persistence area.

[pieface]

I use a 8GB USB with 2048MB put aside for persistence. Use Unebootin, its a simple process.

[devi1]

On my setup I use Unetbootin to setup a bootable 8 gig usb drive, then I boot to the 8 gig drive and plug in a formatted 16 gig drive and (while still running backtrack off of the 8 gig drive) open the install icon from the desktop and when it asks where to install it to I select the 16 gig usb drive and tell it to use the entire disk.

The reason I do it this way is because I needed more space so I purchased a 16 gig usb drive but Unetbootin wouldn't allow me to install backtrack and use the rest for persistence, it limited it to something like 8 gigs. This also allows backtrack to act as if it's installed to the disk, although I'm not sure if it would boot in a different machine, but I use the same machine each time I boot backtrack.