Kali Linux USB persistence the right way

[@davidbombal]

Boot Kali Linux off a USB flash drive and keep persistency :) Download: www.kali.org/ // Link to PDF // davidbombal.wiki/kaliusb // KZbin video REFERENCE // Kali USB Live Boot with Persistence: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fIq8hmynj5WDptU // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb X: www.x.com/davidbombal Instagram: instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal KZbin: www.youtube.com/@davidbombal // MY STUFF // www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal // SPONSORS // Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: [e-mail] // MENU // 0:00 - Installing Kali Linux on a USB flash drive // Method 1 and method 2 01:05 - Download the PDF to follow the steps 01:46 - Etcher vs Rufus 02:32 - Method 1: Easy Method (Rufus) 02:56 - Downloading Kali 03:35 - Downloading Rufus 04:19 - Using Rufus to install Kali on the USB 06:39 - Rebooting into the BIOS and booting from Kali USB 08:18 - Testing persistence 09:54 - Method 2: Preferred Method (Etcher) // Downloading Kali 10:34 - Downloading Etcher 10:58 - Using Etcher to install Kali on the USB 12:04 - Rebooting into the BIOS and booting from Kali USB 13:34 - Enabling persistence using commands 16:49 - Testing persistence 18:40 - Conclusion kali kali linux kali linux usb kali usb persistence kali linux usb persistence kali linux 2024 kali linux 2025 Kali Live Boot USB Persistence Balena Etcher Flash USB Boot from USB Secure Boot BIOS Settings GRUB Menu Command Line Kali Linux Persistence Ethical Hacking Cybersecurity Linux Tutorial USB Boot Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only. I own all equipment used for this demonstration. No actual attack took place on any websites. Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel! #kalilinux #kaliusb #kali

[@Hartley94]

Thank you.

[@codingwithebooks]

Hi David could you make a video removing a windows OS and installing kali as the new OS

[@dz_zyy]

Hello, David! I have a question, I've had trouble installing Kali on my Acer Nitro 5, it only works on virtual machines but I want to boot off a flash drive and it gives me the same error every time, I've disabled secure boot I've done everything right and it doesn't work, thank you in advance! Love the videos!

[@Rabiullah12]

Create a video on usb live persistence of parrot os

[@takeshidoi4214]

Mr David, Hi, sorry for my bad english, but i increase more one tool in Android, use Ultimate USB (no root needed), is great all in Wonder tool for bootable usb👍 accomplied your channel! Thank's for share security informations!

[@BrianMaddox]

Can I just say how much I appreciate you not using thumbnails of yourself screaming or doing goofy stuff? The great info and lack of that nonsense has definitely kept me subscribing!

[@jacktringoli3299]

Although it would have been funny if when he showed the flash drive plugged in and highlighted the first time and he's like "I already got mine plugged in" the editor would have used the funny "woooow" sound effect lol

[@wolfheart5408]

Nope. Starts feeling like I'm watching memes, not informative IT videos

[@isackmathias9965]

Thanks a lot, David! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Every time I installed Kali on my Mac, it got corrupted after updates, but your content helped me resolve the issue perfectly. Great work!

[@TELL_ME_WHY_NOT]

I am truly grateful for this content. You have done this before and continue to do it. I appreciate your effort, thank you, David Bombal.

[@visionary4787]

Thank you so much! I have been having trouble with persistence on my kali usb boot!! Keep up the good work david!

[@gauravvaswani2994]

Instead of going through all this trouble, get two usb flash drives, install the iso one of them, using which, you can install the os on the other flash drive. That is what i personally do for daily driving debian 12 bookworm as well as kali linux. It is very practical and functional method. Also, you won't have to select the kali persistence option everytime you want to boot into the os. Also, this method works for all linux distros, even the ones that do not natively have an option of having persistent storate such as arch. This method shown in the video can indeed help gain some exposure and expand your knowledge but, it is highly unnecessary. This method shown in the vid is more of a diy type of thing which someone would do for fun and is not very practical. If i missed out on something or if there is some other targetted use case for this method, please let me know. After all, we are all here to learn and expand our knowledge :)

[@ShinigamiGrin]

Actually it looks like it is the recommended method and considered best practice. I'm not entirely sure about the differences though.

[@zuerte21]

thats what i usually do it bud sometimes you have to reinstall grub for removable media

[@ikust007]

Damn I would love to understand all that you say /( need a video for dummies . But the type of dummy that tries to learn…

[@NoName-g2r5d]

i got a new laptop with ubuntu in it. loved it but had to go to windows for school things. i thought about having a usb dedicated for linux. now that you mentioned it, I want to give it a try. I also thought using a usb with kali linux but in a VM . anyway how do you do it?

[@uxer666]

Do you use Ventoy?

[@kingacme2389]

Fantastic work. The PDF and video well explained, aweseome, thank you David!

[@00Jimmy00]

Thank you David, great video. I too, recommend setting persistence via CLI

[@coreywhite3161]

Awesome work David! Your channel is top shelf..

[@andreafranceschini2400]

The first time I did it was in 2019, to keep things simple I chose to encrypt the persistence partition. It was a pain. 😊 Thanks for sharing all this hints

[@HellsingGhrey-ht2wg]

How did you encrypt the partition???

[@womacko]

​@@HellsingGhrey-ht2wg there is an article about it: kali_org - Adding Encrypted Persistence to a Kali Linux Live USB Drive

[@Epixflame]

​@@HellsingGhrey-ht2wg cryptsetup command line tool that comes with kali.

[@prod.awwfull]

Done all the steps and everything worked perfectly thanks bro 🙏

[@jeparive]

Thanks Mr. Bombal You had just earned a loyal member of your channel.

[@anvayashakti2374]

Thank you Sir David 🙏🏻 as always useful. Great video ❤

[@davidbombal]

Thank you!

[@botak333]

I was follow and same output succes like u, only deferend sdb, yours is sda. But when i restart the partition persistence gone, evwn my test file gone also​@@davidbombal

[@ahmedsaidu2400]

Thanks for this wonderful and educative lecture

[@zalves2000]

I have your Udemy course. Fantastic work. Appreciate your KZbin content, also high quality and informative.

[@davidbombal]

Awesome, thank you so much for your support!

[@royjose9986]

- [ Nice video ❤ ] - Very good explanation 👍🏻 Thank you.

[@dondanij]

Gran video y explicación gracias por compartir con la comunidad!!

[@SFTLFT]

excellent video, well explained, greetings from Colombia

[@karthikkrazy8020]

I'm receiving an error, I'm unable to mount /dev/sda3 due to some not recognised fs or some other error but I've tried some file systems and all suggestions but still not working

[@womacko]

Also we need an explaination, on how to edit the grub boot order, to skip it and directly boot into persistent (encrypted) kali live USB.

[@dimitristsoutsouras2712]

There is also ventoy that lets you select persistent storage.

[@omidhk98]

Thanks for the video. that was a big help❤

[@nabiel220]

Thank you Sir, For me, method two works fine ❤

[@gamereditor59ner22]

That's cool! I can use this method on my 1 TB drive.

[@lesteraxelballadareslopez5850]

Excellent video about how to install Kali on flash drive.

[@akliluabay95]

hey DB tnx for updating technology

[@charmainedudley7747]

Hi David, love your videos (& of course your Guests (fav is OTW - awesomeness lol)! Just wondering, what you think about Ventoy - would be an interesting videe i.e. your take on it from a Linux user point of view (or Windows (ofc) if you do consider making a video on it ..... just a thought). Greetings from South Africa!

[@beerekartheek9184]

Thank you for posting this video this video will very much

[@davidbombal]

You're welcome!

[@Seth_22]

Thanks you so much!

[@anticupid5165]

Appreciate it boss man

[@itsmew8254]

I have a lenovo v15 laptop, and I cant find the boot priority option in my one

[@mapps6427]

it's like you knew i've been struggling with doing thiss🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

[@dproscripts1811]

Great video, but every time I think about live booting (which I daily drive on a multi-os usb), I remember the horrors of windows 11 laptop bitlocker. I think its advisable to warn people about bitlocker (and how its enabled by default), how to get their decryption key (just in case), etc. I messed up by booting windows without secure boot, and was stressed out for a good 30 minutes while on vacation, trying an ungodly number of microsoft accounts to find the key. Just a good idea in general.

[@onethe2000]

Another aweseome Video, thank you David! What is the song playing at 9:54 (Metehod 2) if its even a song 😀

[@erichanson5628]

I have never had luck with Rufus and Kali. I do use Rufus for most other things...

[@kawsr2669]

David Bombal you already did that.

[@HellsingGhrey-ht2wg]

Mr. David, I love your vids. I did it a little bit differently though (I think). 1. Downloaded the Air Gapped Kali 12GB ish 2. Used Balena Etcher to move it to a USB 3. Stuck that USB into a ghost pc (Laptop with no hard drive, no speakers, no mic, no camera, no internal wifi) 4. Ran the Kali installation 5. Inserted ANOTHER USB and chose that USB as the install location 6. Ran the installation, chose the option to install all of the tools...and it took HOURS!!!!!!....almost 7 hours if not more... ...tried to boot from the USB and the laptop was like "NOPE!"...freaked out and wondered if I had to do it all over again... 7. Changed the Bios to book from legacy...secure boot was already disabled, being a ghost laptop and all 8. Ran Kali from the USB and it was AWESOME!!!!!!! It saved EVERYTHING to the USB, so I think persistence is already obtained. Feel free to elucidate on anything I may have missed or everlooked.

[@yadatov]

C'est fabuleux c'est bien la 1ere fois que je suis un tuto linux qui fonctionne du 1er coup

[@Myke001]

What is the process for doing this using macos please?

[@MalformedMisshapenMonstrosity]

Very useful video, thank you! What are your thoughts on using Ventoy to achieve this? I have a Ventoy drive with Kali and persistence and it seems to work pretty well.

[@womacko]

Hey David, I'd highly appreciate if you can also make a video about how to add encryption. It's a major safety issue, having a pentest usb-stick without encryption laying around..

[@hyperninjaprox]

Am i the only one who has wondered why david uses light mode instead of dark. Man i am watching this in my basement lol. At 4:19 You can see a pinned folder called "stuff" this is the kind of folder names i use on a daily bases nice to see i am not the chosen one lol. Nice tutorial man i always wondered why its hella slow running it of a persistent usb.

[@dawidvanstraaten]

David normally uses dark mode 😂

[@YourInfoWorld7]

Not working if you make 13gb airgap live iso and boot it on new gen laptops, IT STUCKS AT GRUB 2.12 BLACK SCREEN. However it works well with older systems before of 2014, any idea y not working on new laptops ?

[@FlandersKen]

use the whole drive for persistence in rufus, i.e. usb, or stick to default kali live image

[@FlandersKen]

save room for swap in partitioner

[@GXAlex11]

Thank you very much for that content. What about encryption+persistency? Is it also possible to do a full installation on an USB drive with encryption? The same method as the full installation on a computer?

[@PenguinMeows]

HI , nice video a small doubt I recently installed kali into a bootable usb but it also has access to my other drivers and isnt an isolates os ( like tails) , so if I have to use it for practicing hacking won't I be risking the information on my drives as well. I read at some places that you can simply unmount the drives but wont that affect my main os as well? and also that If I put an encryption on the drives that live os ignore the encryption on nfts?

[@Balakrishnan-id1zs]

I got your CCNA course in Udemy, I love it!

[@lordboreas371]

14:46 when i press n it says all partitions are in use... How do i fix that?

[@TechInventorAman]

instead of a flash drive can i use an SD Card as well ?

[@robotron1236]

Just install to the drive instead of running it live. I don’t use Kali, I use Manjaro (but I will be switching to pure arch soon due to the mdd debacle) but that’s how I do it for a portable drive.

[@GILDOMINGOSS]

Where is KZbin's dubbing on your videos, after several channels are already using...

[@mphatsokhobera1139]

Boom !!!!! i successfully install kali from USB Flash Drive Thank you so much , i will like to learn more from here . #BrownJoker from Malawi

[@hiphopworld587]

When i boot my kali with live persistence there is showing Black screen and white blinking hash _ and it's not starting 😭

[@CarloRicciardi]

I’ve tried the second method twice. Both times I ended up with this same problem after a very long attempt to boot kali. Any luck solving this?

[@PVC4108]

Same here

[@Michaelcomputer]

Hi guys, im having issues with the persistence. I did exactly what he said, and I chose the second method and wrote the codes and still everytime time I reboot, the file doesn't appear back where i saved it Anything I'm missing here?

[@dhanushannam]

First time I had the same issue but after another restart the file was saved

[@Michaelcomputer]

@ I tried restarting and that didn’t work anything else I can do to make it work?

[@tis_official._]

Rufus worked for me🔥

[@geraldbantang8486]

I'm watching while booting a kali

[@yaswanthch-t4r]

What is the difference between Live boot and Dual boot ?

[@ikust007]

Thank you

[@gabor_kov]

Can you please do a video on how to do this with disk encryption. I have been thinking about buying one of those encrypted usbs, but you can encryption linux during the installation too. I don't know how to do that in a live environment

[@Justice4all2023]

Problem with USB 3 is resources don't seem to allocate well with certain OSs and live systems freeze alot. Best OS seems to be Antix for live systems not freezing when doing minor work.

[@csilva8785]

just saw all 3 videos you have on this topic: in all of them you still "forgot" how to set up a password before booting, imo thats the whole point of encrypting the disk

[@SohamPrateek]

request for installation guide on parrot os 🙏

[@tony6261]

what format should be used for the USB drive?

[@dawidvanstraaten]

It doesn't matter. You can format it to use ex-fat or ntfs. It'll be changed and formatted to the correct file system when the USB is flashed.

[@Yashthealien14OisO]

What speed of usb is required?

[@rouxanfuture]

I have done this plus many other methods to get persistence but nothing works...

[@jean9587]

Thanks soo muchhhh, allahumbarik. Last time i did this. I lost my main os and all of my data

[@Idont_Exist444]

I'm on the edge of crashing out and hitting my head on the wall I've been trying to set my usb for kali Linux live and tried like 7 times but when I boot it kept saying Invalid magic number" or "you need to load the kernel first" (i used Rufus for this) and the new attempt with etcher when it was verifying it said saying like "Something went wrong. If it is a compressed image, please check that the archive is not corrupted. The writer process ended unexpectedly"

[@znm-ii2vk]

Did it for rufus and got a port 69 error, not sure what it is

[@SansaStarkw]

Good man, I love the Brave browser more than Chrome any day. I think Brave even wins over Firefox.

[@Artyrian_Tyler]

Оуу я ще 5 років тому намагався поставити на флешку Kali, а зараз це так просто зробити 😯

[@bronxboys101]

I used rufus to instal but never get an option to write in ISO mode or in DD mode just started automatically and I try twice installing

[@emmanueldollaga9311]

Is this working on external drive?

[@OmaraAJ]

Do you remove flash drive afterwards?

[@Tanagumch]

David main issue is that after in later stage my Kali shows black screen with ‘_’ logo when I start or reboot the system again and it stuck it there forever,I need to type command “nomodeset” manually.Is their way to get rid of this issue.

[@ThatNword]

Hy, are there any other operating system, that look good too??

[@CharanjeevCharlie]

can you make it for macs also?

[@MarioBoroica]

Hi! How can I install persistance but also graphical install, like setting the user account from 0?

[@zerotheory941]

Is there any reason why this cannot be done with any linux iso?

[@erichanson5628]

Rufus works great for all other Linux iso.

[@zerotheory941]

@@erichanson5628 Sorry, maybe I should clarify. Could the 2nd method be used to make say a persistent Pop_OS USB? or Fedora or Arch?

[@erichanson5628]

@@zerotheory941 You could. Just ask ChatGpt for the commands for that specific Linux distro to make it persistent. Rufus will work for the other Distros. It simply fails for Kali for some reason and has done so for years... It is a really strange glitch. I have installed Windows and over a dozen Linux Distros with no issue. Kali I have never gotten to work and had to switch to Etcher which is also a stellar program.

[@cpuuk]

Alas, I just couldn't get this work after 2x attempts. After doing everything it took forever to re-start (booted very quickly on very first start up) and still didn't show the test file on the desktop. Might try the Kali method next.

[@MARIUSBAAR]

I could not get the etcher method to work I tried it twice I still see the 3 partitions on my USB but the file I saved on my desktop is gone also it takes now a lot longer to boot then before

[@MARIUSBAAR]

Ok after setup I made a note on desktop and on reboot it was gone so then I made a note again and after restart it now stayed so it is working but it is a lot slower now then at initial boot but still great work 👍

[@anasdaryer]

thank u so much

[@opelekzy3889]

What do i need to do. Everytime i tried to power on kali on vmware it says "failed to connect pipe to virtual machine

[@solanaceae2069]

First method worked on my old laptop. My Rufus didn't have the Large FAT option so I went with the FAT 16 default. Not sure how much difference that will make. Maybe I should have selected 32 though.

[@Footballcr7-p5e]

can I make a passowrd or username for kali lnux as installed kali linux

[@Thezootkat]

What about a standalone chatbot usb with no operating system ( initramfs )

[@harry36242]

Does it delete any info off the computer?

[@davidchoudhary945]

After sudo fdisk…….. When i press n and hit enter it says all the space for primary partition is in use

[@willthompson83]

Why Kali Linux instead of Tails? I saw a KZbin video and ended up putting Tails, Tor, and Kali Linux on separate USB drives. Tails runs slow as heck when web surfing, I like the way it looks when I snatched the drive out but back to my question why Kail Linux are they really the same, what's the difference?

[@jztchl]

It's because of tor

[@mohammedhariri9979]

I tried both rufus and etcher , after i choose boot with usb persistence, both giving me "integrity: problem loading X.508 certificate -65" and freeze

[@Seenu345]

I am failed my Kali testing what can I do

[@N.h.at.M.i.n.h]

my sda is sda 1 -> 5 which one to choose?

[@Better-Mindset-1]

Hey David please answer me... is the Hp victus 15 a good laptop for ethical hacking?

[@pelegkislasi8723]

just making sure, i can get back to the windows machine and all will be saved right?

[@dawidvanstraaten]

You will be able to. I normally just enable secure boot again before I boot back into Windows, but you don't have to.

[@bnbbnb8115]

After i flash kali to the usb it says i have to format my disk before use. Kali fails to launch need help plz

[@N.h.at.M.i.n.h]

hey when i unplug my usb the kali linux is gone how to fix it

[@PavleAdzic-xm2qs]

if i download images for dual boot do i get it the same or please reply

[@pavelyankouski4913]

Multyboot ftw

[@bibas007]

What do you suggest for someone who is just starting to learn? Kali on a VM or a live USB?

[@dawidvanstraaten]

VM if you have the RAM.

[@Outwars1]

Is there any difference in the machine/firmware level code or environment if rather than setting the primary boot drive to the USB in the UEFI BIOS, you use a quickboot option key to select a bootable device rather than fully entering the BIOS?

[@dawidvanstraaten]

Should be no difference

[@NeoVdV]

Does it works on Macbook air 2020 with M1 ?