Make a BackTrack Linux Flash Drive in Windows

How to Make a BackTrack Linux Flash Drive using Windows. BackTrack is a Live Linuxdistribution based on SLAX that is focused purely on penetration testing. Distributed by remote-exploit.org, BackTrack is the successor to Auditor. It comes prepackaged with security tools including network analyzers, password crackers, wireless tools and fuzzers. Although originally designed to Boot from a CD or DVD, BackTrack contains USB installation scripts that make portable installation to a USB device a snap. In the following tutorial, we cover the process of installing BackTrack to a USB flash drive from within a working Windows environment.



BackTrack Desktop Screenshot:

How to install BackTrack to a USB device:
Note: USB installation of BacktTack performs like the Live CD. Currently a persistence BackTrack feature is outside the scope of this tutorial.

1. Download the (Portable Backtrack) USB BackTrack (Extended)version
2. Extract the Boot and BT3 folders to the root of your USB device
3. Navigate to the Boot folder on your "USB device" and clickbootinst.bat (click continue if the following error appears)

4. Follow the onscreen instructions to make the device bootable
5. Once the USB install script has finished, reboot your computer and set your BIOS or Boot Menu to boot from the USB device

How to boot OS from a USB drive

1. Download Win32 Disk Imager

Win32 Disk Imager a free piece of software that does the whole job for you. You can download it from here. Extract the zip file. After that, plug in your USB drive and run Win32DiskImager.exe.

2. Copy the image file to your USB drive

1. Click the blue folder icon and select your image file.
2. In the Device area, select the USB drive you want to copy the image to. WARNING: All data on this drive will be deleted. Please make very sure you select the proper drive letter (verify with Explorer).
   
3. Click Write.
4. Win32 Disk Imager copies the file’s contents onto your USB drive. Check the progess with the progress bar.

3. Proceed to the boot section below

Linux

1. Find out which device is your USB drive

Plug in your USB drive. Open up a terminal window and type fdisk -l. You’ll see an overview of all your disks and partitions. Identify your USB drive by looking for its size. In my example below, my USB drive has a size of 65 MB and is called /dev/sda. Please make sure you identify the correct one as all data on it will be lost in the following steps. Consider yourself warned. I will refer to the USB drive as /dev/USB from now on to avoid confusion.

2. Copy the image file to your USB drive

Type dd if=image.img of=/dev/USB into your console where image.img is your image file and /dev/USB is your USB drive. Use a USB drive with a capacity of at least 4 GB.

3. Proceed to the boot section below

Boot

Once you are done copying your image onto your USB stick, you can boot from it. Switch off your computer and plug in your USB stick. Switch on your computer and enter the boot menu (F11 or F12 on most machines). Select your USB drive as boot device. That’s it.

Other Methods


Method 1 :

Here we assume that you are using either Vista or Windows 7 to create a bootable USB.

1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.
2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.
3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:
DISKPART and hit enter.
LIST DISK and hit enter.
Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no is Disk 1.
4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.
SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
(Format process may take few seconds)
ASSIGN
EXIT
Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.
5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “D” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “H” as my USB drive letter.
6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:
D:CD BOOT and hit enter. Where “D” is your DVD drive letter.
CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.
BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:
(Where “H” is your USB drive letter)
7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.
You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).
Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.



Method 2 - Make your flash drive bootable using Bart's mkbt util:
http://www.nu2.nu/mkbt/ | Alt: mkbt20.zip
Put a bootable floppy disk in your A: drive or create one using Windows.
Download mkbt20.zip and unpack to to new temp folder you create.
Go to the temp folder.
Extract the bootsector from the bootable floppy disk. eg Open a DOS Window and go to the directory where you extracted MKBT. Type:
mkbt -c a: bootsect.bin
The boot sectors from the bootable floppy disk have just been saved to a file in the temp folder you created.
Format the flash drive in FAT or FAT16.
Copy the bootsector to the flash drive. Open a DOS Window and go to the folder where you extracted MKBT. Type:
mkbt -x bootsect.bin Z:
"Z" represents the flash drive drive Letter. So if your flash drive has another drive letter, then change the "Z" accordingly.
Now you can [grin] "should" be able to copy the utils you need to the pen drive.

“CrunchMode” for Windows 7 power users

Want a one stop access point for all those extended control panel settings in Windows 7? Well, it’s easy: just use CrunchMode*.
“CrunchMode” is really easy to set up: just create a new folder and then rename it to CrunchMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and then double click it and you’re rocking. This trick won’t work on 64-bit Vista, but it works like a charm on all the different versions of Win7.

Source : http://www.crunchgear.com