Hi I was wondering if there was a way I can boot backtrack5 from a partition of my external USB hard drive. This way I can go into BIOS and change boot order to the partition, and run it from any computer that has the option to in the BIOS, but I do not want the whole USB drive to be dedicated to BT5 because I have other miscellaneous files I want to use. to clear things up

http://i.imgur.com/UJuRL.png

Then select the partition in the boot order
(pretend there is a external USB drive in the list I stole this from google images)

http://i.imgur.com/xyiog.jpg

I think a different disto may be better suited to your needs. I like using many of the top ones at distrowath.com

Opensuse would be a good choice. Just boot to the live cd or installer cd and choose the external drive. Be sure to put the loader on the external drive.

I agree! Backtrack is Slax, and it doesn't have office-productivity or AV programs installed. You could boot Adrienne Knoppix and select install to hard drive from the menu. Unless you want a network security testing live Slax distro, but unless your conducting security tests, Backtrack isn't what I'd call a well rounded system for the average GUI desktop user. But for what it is, it's the best there is!

Thanks for the recommendation but I am fine with Backtrack, but if I install it onto external drive can I stil access other files on the drive in windows, and will the partition show up in BIOS?

Will Backtrack be the only operating system on the external drive?
If not what else?
If so, what other files do you have? Do you have them on a separate partition? Are they Linux or windows?

The "other files on the drive", are they windows or Linux? You'll likely have to install some third party software as I do not believe windows has the capacity to read Linux files natively.

More details on exactly what you have and what your intentions are would be helpful.
If Backtrack will be the only OS, you would just install Grub bootloader to the mbr of THAT drive.

Well, backtrack is meant for highly trained technical users that have a very specific use. It has no use for anyone else.