Can Persistence be created on a Kali (2019.1) USB Live with single partition?

[HarryPNyce]

I just recently created a Kali (2019.1) Live USB device, disabled secure boot on my HP Spectre x360 laptop and fired it up. I've referred to both of the following guides, but they all a refer to a separate persistence partition to be saved on:

https://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usb-persistence
https://www.offensive-security.com/kali-linux/kali-encrypted-usb-persistence/


Is it possible to enable USB Encrypted Persistence with a single partition on my USB flash drive. It's currently listed as /dev/sda1


File system: fat32
Label: KALI_LIVE-2
Used: 3.27 GiB (11%)
Unused: 25.37 GiB (89%)
Size: 28.64 GiB
Status: Mounted on /run/live/medium, /usr/lib/live/mount/medium

If it's not possible, can I use GParted or some other built in Kali tool to make adjustments to the partition and maybe set up a ~20GB Encrypted Persistence partition for usage? Thanks for any assistance to my little dilemma. It's been a while since i've actually used Kali... in fact, the last time I had a USB flash drive I carried around with me was in the Backtrack Linux days, for cracking WEP. Have a lot to learn.

[quarinteen]

Never tried but I don't see why not FDE is common

[HarryPNyce]

I'm not really grasping the steps it'll take to even get Persistence working, let alone with full disk encryption. Lots to learn, lots to learn.

[bigbiz]

The persistence partition is where all you saved data gets stored seperate from the original kali linux data. When kali boots up it also loads up the partition automaticly. ( if you start persistence mode) so you need a separate partition to keep your data in. Kind of like a usb drive within your usb drive.

[HarryPNyce]

Thank you kindly. What's the easiest/best way to go about adjusting, or creating a separate (say ~20GB) data partition on my USB flash drive?

Or should I just start from scratch and do it all on my Windows desktop as all the guides recommend? Thanks for your expertise, sharing your input and attempting to assist my dumbass. Yet nice.

[bigbiz]

I just follow the instructions here

https://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usb-persistence

If you boot right into your usb drive, from the boot menu enter usb persistence from there enter your commands. Then i like to try it out open a note pad save a few words to the desktop. Reboot usb into persistence again then you should have the file saved there.

[HarryPNyce]

Thanks, will give this a shot. Finally broke down and installed the MiniTool Partition Wizard Free 11 that all the guides (for Windows) referenced, which allowed me to create an 8GB partition for Kali and a 20GB persistence partition. Now to see if i can figure out how to properly mount it and get it configured. Thanks for the guide, that looks quite helpful. Gonna go fire up the USB stick on my laptop and give it a whirl, I think. Wish me luck.

[HarryPNyce]

Created a ~20GB LUKS encrypted partition on my 32GB USB flash drive, but unsure how to properly utilize it. I want OS updates and programs to be able to be installed, applied and saved after each usage. Is this possible, or will I have to manually update the smaller OS partition as each new ISO is released?

For example, I want to install nVidia drivers for my MX 150 GPU, on top of the onboard Intel 620 UHD gpu. Please correct me if I'm missing how Persistence works, or should.