Bootable + Storage Pendrive

[¨TrisT¨]

Ok, so I just made kali my main OS on my laptop, and I really like to have the portable version around as it comes in handy. But the pendrive is 8gb and the os only occupies 3.something.

So I created an ntfs partition on linux for the rest. Which works perfectly! On linux.

It shows up as 2 mounted partitions (it actually has 3, the OS has 2, although linux only reads 1), the OS and the ntfs storage, which is great. I can plug it and boot from it or save stuff inthere.

Now the problem I have is as always with windows.

It seems that it first reads the os partition, fails to recognize the file system and then just quits, which means the ntfs partition at the end is never seen, so it shows me the "does not contain a recognized file system" message.

 

Now I want to be able to boot from non-uefi BIOS' and have storage.

Can I just change the order and put ntfs first or will that mess BIOS' up? Otherwise is there any other way of achieving this objective?

 

EDIT:

Ok, I've just opened disk management and it seems that that ntfs partition shows up as non-identified? It's still a 4.6 gig partition but for some reason windows can't ID it?

I'll try and reformat it in linux and see what happens, gotta check the backups fist.

 

EDIT 2:

Ok, so when I try to format that specific partition in windows it gives me an unexpected error which I can't know what is because it tells me to look in system's even log. Which is most likely a million lines longer when I go look inthere. Back to linux! Should also point out every single other significant action either is grayed out or gives errors.

 

EDIT 3:

Ok, back in linux gparted also didn't allow to mess with that partition, so I had to use fdisk. Which worked.

It still doesn't work in windows  which is expected though since it's what I did the last time

 

 EDIT 4:

Ok, that's F'd up. diskpart on windows shows the first partition (part of the OS) as Partition 1. But then the second OS partition and the ntfs partition show up as Partition 0. They both have the same partition number. What the fuck. Imma try and remove it an then set a space between these two.

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary           2719 MB    32 KB
  Partition 0    Primary             89 MB  2720 MB
  Partition 0    Primary           4678 MB  2810 MB

EDIT 5:

So I figure it's some sort of compatibility issue with windows since ntfs is setup differently between windows NT and linux. I am now trying to run a  mkntfs  on that partition after I set it as "ntfs volume set" (87) with fdisk. This is supposed to work in both windows and linux. It does take quite a while to "initalize device with zeros".

 

EDIT 6:

I'm really dumb. And so is windows, it doesn't recognize any primary or for that matter logical partition after the first partition. This ofc for flash drives and few other cases. I'm gonna try to move the bootable partitions to the end and create the ntfs in the beginning. Linux will still be able to see everything. But my problem is the BIOS. Though I'm not sure, it should look for a boot loader inside the device it's booting from right? Not just go to the first partition it finds and try to look for stuff. Imma try it regardless. It'll take quite a bit I'll update you guys on it.

 

EDIT 7:

That worked

Windows can't see the OS partitions but can see all others as they're the first.

[¨TrisT¨]

Ok, so in case anyone needs an answer to this. Windows can't read any partitions on a flash drive that are not the one in first place. So logical of primary, the 2nd, 3rd etc won't be readable by windows. Now that means if you wanna have storage and a bootable OS in your flash drive at the same time, you're gonna have to put the storage partition in the first place and move the others to the "back".

You can also put a multi boot thing inthere and have as many OSs as you want + storage!

Hope this could help.