Make a BackTrack Linux Flash Drive in Windows

How to Make a BackTrack Linux Flash Drive using Windows. BackTrack is a Live Linux distribution 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:

BackTrack in action running from USB

Distribution Home Page: http://www.backtrack-linux.org

Minimum Flash Drive Capacity: 2GB+

Persistent Feature: Yes (Backtrack 4)

USB Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) prerequisites:

  • Universal USB Installer (does the USB conversion)
  • BackTrack 3 or 4 ISO
  • 2GB+ USB flash drive (fat32 formatted)
  • A windows host PC to perform the build

How to install BackTrack to a USB device from Windows:

  1. Download bt3-final.iso or Download bt4-final.iso
  2. Download and launch our Universal USB Installer, select Backtrack 3 or Backtrack 4 (depending on what you downloaded), and follow the onscreen instructions
  3. Reboot and set your BIOS or Boot Menu to Boot from the USB device and proceed to boot

Note: Once the Backtrack 4 system has loaded, you must type startx at the prompt, to start the graphical X environment.

If all went well, you should now be running from your very own Portable Backtrack 3 or 4 on USB!

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