Ethical Hacker Community Forums

Installing Bactrack to the hard drive is easy. I actually dual boot between Xp pro and Backtrack.  It makes more sense to do that because Backtrack requires such little space.
I used Partition Magic to create a Linux partition, but you can do it with the qparted utility on Backtrack if you wish. 
After creating the new partition, boot up to the Backtrack cd and then click on  Kstart to open up the program menu. Click on Backtrack/misc/ Backtrack installer.
There you will see 3 drop down boxes.  Make sure the top reads  /boot. The second to the top should read /mnt/hda3 assuming your Linux partition is identified as hda3. You can check that with qparted.  The 3rd from the top should read /dev/hda3. Make sure you choose REAL (2550) and not the USB install.   
Click on install and wait. It usually hangs for a long time on 80% so don’t abort if that happens. Just get a cup of coffee and come back in a few.
Why install it on the hard drive? 1. Its will work faster. 2. Updates will stay until the next session.  3. You can add modules and expand your install beyond what your CD can hold.
4. Its easier to save packets to your hard drive rather than mounting a usb drive every time.

I've done the same thing with Knoppix4.0.2 and more recently with Knoppix 5.0.1. The process is similar except that instead of using the GUI menu I opened up Konsole and typed;

I pressed enter and the install started. I chose a full Debian install (you get a choice of 3 diferent install types). I have 3 Windows partitions, C, D and E and I installed the Knoppix on some un-allocated space at the back of the HDD. For some reason it installed on hda5 with hda6 as a swap partition. I've got no idea where hda4 vanished to.

There seems to be some consensus in the linux dev community that is moving towards live CD's packaged with installers. Knoppix which used to be a traditional live CD has now placed paramount importance on their installer in the latest version. Also Ubuntu\Kubuntu which used to come in 2 versions (install and live CD) now only comes as 1 live CD with an installer icon placed on the desktop.

Obviously your linux install partitions are logical drives. The first logical drive in linux is always /dev/hda5 (the partition table in the MBR has 4 entries which can hold hda1-hda4) no matter how many primary partitions are on the disk.

It was due to having that many partitions already there. Also, some distros seems to act a little different on the install when they see 2 or more windows partitions already there. Even windows can act a little wierd sometimes!  I think its great you did go for it! Too many Admins seem scared of linux for some reason.

Yes, you're both right. They are logical drives.