Install Backtrack 4 on a flash drive

HOW TO INSTALL BACKTRACK 4 ON A FLASH DRIVE and be able to save you data (for beginners) This is the first tutorial I have ever written so if you have any suggestions on how I can make it better please let me know. Purpose I wanted to be able to run Backtrack on my laptop, without the worry of having it dual booted, and be able to save my data, such as wallpaper, updates, and settings. Unfortunately all the walkthroughs I could find either didn't work or ended up being a live cd on a flash drive. So, this is how I got it to work. What you will need 1. A flash drive that is at least 4 GB. (maybe 2 GB) Considering the ISO is only 1570 MB, I would think 2 GB should work, but When I tried it I got a warning saying the installation may fail if I have less than 4.8 GB. I canceled it so I don't know if it will work or not The more space you have the more data you can save. So, I would suggest 8 GB or more. I used 16. If you can make it work on 2 GB please let me know. 2. A BackTrack 4 final release iso you can download bt4-final.iso from bt4-final.iso 3. A writable DVD 4. You may want to print out a copy of this tutorial to follow along. Here We Go Do not plug your flash drive in 'till step 4 Step 1. After downloading the bt4-final.iso, burn it to your dvd. Step 2. Place your new BT4 live cd into your optical drive and boot from it. Step 3. Choose the "Boot from persistent live cd" option. After it it finishes loading, you will be logged in as root@bt. From here you want to type the command "startx" without the quotes. This will bring you into the GUI (graphical user interface). Keep in mind that all Linux/Unix commands and directories are case sensitive. Step 4. Time to plug in your flash drive. You will want to make sure you have removed all data from your flash drive as this process will wipe it clean. After plugging in your flash drive, you will need to go into GParted and partition it. To do this you will open up the "K Menu" (The little dragon thing in lower left hand corner where the "start menu" is in windows), go up to system (NOT System Menu), and select Partition Editor. Once GParted opens, don't be disappointed when you don't see your flash drive listed there. Just go to the drop down menu in the upper right corner of GParted and select your flash drive. It will probably be sdb, sdc, or sdd depending on how many devices you have plugged in. You can check the size of the drive if you are unsure which one it is. For the sake of this tutorial I will refer to it as sdc. When you select your flash drive, you will see its partition table. Click on sdc1, then, at the top of GParted, select device, then Create Partition Table. This will erase the current partition table, as well as all the data. After the old partition table is gone, select "unallocated", then go to Partition (Also at the top of GParted) and select "new". Here we are making a new partition. If you want to devote the whole flash drive to BT4 then leave everything default. For the filesystem you can choose either ext2 or ext3. My understanding is that ext3 has recovery and ext2 does not. Ask google for something better than hear say. Both should work fine. "Label" is simply what you want to name your flash drive. After you have selected your filesystem and named your device, click ADD, then at the top, click apply. Now you have created a new partition and you are ready to begin the installation process. Step 5. Well that was fun. :-) Now lets start the installation. In the upper left corner of the desktop you will see a file called "install.sh" click on it. I have noticed that sometimes starting the install.sh can be a bit buggy. If it doesn't seem to want to start for you, reboot by typing init 6 in the terminal. Don't worry, you won't have to repeat step 4. Choose your time zone then click forward. Choose your Keyboard layout and click forward. In the next window, choose "Guided -use entire disk" then choose sdc, or whatever yours is called, and click forward. Now you want to choose advanced so you can tell it where to place the boot loader. Go to the drop down menu and choose sdc1. Click OK. Then Click install. Now cuddle up to a good book cuz this will take a while. Be patient. Remember you are installing from a live cd to a flash drive. This will probably take a couple hours. Once it is installed, and you reboot, you will be prompted to log in. the username is root the password is toor Now you are done Enjoy your BT4 Flash drive and remember This is for Educational and Testing purposes only Neither I, nor this site, promote or condone illegal activities. I hope this helps. sda1