win32 disk imager doesn't work, neither does dd

[bofh28]

When Kali first came out I tried to follow the instructions of using win32 disk imager. I couldn't get it to work. I tried the dd command and that did not work for me either. So I ended up using Unetbootin. I know that is not the proper thing to do.
So on this 3 day weekend for me I tried repeating my experience. I downloaded kali 1.03 and I verified the sha1sum. Today's experience ended the same way so I dug a little deeper.

When I try to use win32 disk-imager version 0.7 I select the Kali iso and click on write. I get the message
"Writing to a physical device can corrupt the device. (Target Device: [E:\] "")
Are you sure you want to continue?
I click on yes. I wait for about 5 minutes for it finish. I eject the usb thumb drive and insert it again. Windows 7 tells me the drive is not formatted.

It turns out that disk-imager does not support ISO images. From http://sourceforge.net/p/win32diskimager/wiki/Home/
"It currently does not* support writing an ISO image to usb.
* Writing standard ISO images is not supported, however hybrid images created with Syslinux's isohybrid does work."

I tried dd if=kali.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=512k and gives me the same unusable drive and disk-imager. Does the blocksize matter? Windows 7 formatted the fat32 partition with a block size of 4096 bytes. I also tried dd if=kali.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=512k and that does not give me a usable drive either.

I am using a 16GB thumb drive that has 2 partitions. The first one is for Kali, the second is for persistence. What am doing wrong?

[maverik35]

You need to create the Kali partition and once installed, you create the other partition.

It seems to me like it has to do with Partition table or Filesystem Table.

Use a linux live distro and use fdisk to format correctly the usb...Be carefull when using it as you might end up erasing your HDD in case you provide the wrong device.

Any doubt, let me know.

Luck.

[bofh28]

I booted up my Kali install and did the following:
The sdc1 partition is 8192M in size, half the size of the drive.

# fdisk /dev/sdc

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 16.2 GB, 16231956480 bytes
141 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7026 cylinders, total 31703040 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x45bab27f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *        2048        8291        3122    b  W95 FAT32

# mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1

# dd if=kali.iso of=/dev/sdc1 bs=512k
dd: writing `/dev/sdc1': No space left on device
7+0 records in
6+0 records out
3146240 bytes (3.1 MB) copied, 0.218116 s, 14.4 MB/s

# dd if=kali.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=512k

# mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

# fdisk /dev/sdc 

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 16.2 GB, 16231956480 bytes
141 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7026 cylinders, total 31703040 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x45bab27f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *          64     4602239     2301088   17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS