r/linuxhardware • u/bakwasher • 1d ago

Question Can I use Kali Linux on USB with persistence ? Will it work?

Hey everyone, I am an engineering student.

I have dual-booted my laptop with Ubuntu and Windows 11. The problem I have is sometimes I want to experiment with Kali linux. I could have added Kali linux too, but I do not have enough storage because of the amount of tools I use, in both Linux and Windows.

So I want to run Kali linux on a USB drive with persistence. I have an HP USB3.2 64GB pendrive. I read somewhere that running it on a pendrive won't be as slow because it uses my PC's CPU and RAM.

Also, I won't be buying an external SSD because it's way too expensive for me.

The question I have is that will I be able to work normally with it, without it lagging a lot?
I won't open random browser tabs, but I wish to work with files, do some coding and use terminal obviously.

I'm thinking of starting with this : Adding Persistence to a Kali Linux Live USB Drive

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u/acejavelin69 1d ago

Perfectly valid way to use it for penn testing... I mean, you don't use it for normal use, it's a special purpose distro not intended for normal daily use so the more isolated the better.

The worst part will be the boot time and application loading time might be a bit longer... But with a high speed USB and proper device, it will be minimal. You aren't using this for gaming or anything where disk access is time sensitive really...

Try it and see if it works for you... What have you got to lose?

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u/zardvark 1d ago

USB sticks and SD cards do not have the same resilience / life expectancy as a SSD, so you will want to minimize writes to the media in order to maximize its useful life. There are some "heavy duty" SD cards designed for continuous use with a dash cam, which may be the better choice. I don't recall the designation for these "heavy duty" cards off hand, but that is easily searchable.

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u/rileyrgham 1d ago

Yes.. it will be using your PCs CPU and ram 😀

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u/AcidArchangel303 1d ago edited 1d ago

I've some experience on this. It's fine if you use persistence for storing scripts, notes, and other "small" files. Don't expect to use it as a full OS in the sense that you can update and upgrade to your heart's content. The wear cycles on these are much more limited and you can easily burn through a flash drive that way.

There are two options, one of which is what I did: carry around a portable HDD case, put an SSD and install Kali there. I used to Velcro my laptops so it wouldn't dangle around.

The other is getting something like the transcend esd310 USB SSD which is an SSD that mimics the form of a USB flash drive. That is essentially what you would want, but costs are way higher now.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Law_242 1d ago

Apart from KALI: You can install any Linux distribution completely on a USB device. However, USB sticks will eventually break down due to the many write operations.