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| Thread ID: 51914 | 2004-12-03 03:11:00 | Linux on USB Hard Drive | Ashley Matthews (550) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 299404 | 2004-12-03 03:11:00 | Hi, My Laptop with its 30G HDD has finally decided that it needs to be upgraded to give more storage space. I'm going to buy a 40gb hard drive for it and use the old 30gb as an external USB drive (i'll buy an enclosure for it). My question is, can I install Linux (in particular FC3 on this external drive)? I can obviously have a boot loader on the primary internal, but is it possible to boot my XP system off one, and FC3 off the USB drive? Ash |
Ashley Matthews (550) | ||
| 299405 | 2004-12-03 03:16:00 | I read in a newsgroup USB 2 external devices (if that hdd is USB2) cant be booted from. BUT can be formatted etc in Windows, in NTFS/whatever. But can be used as a hdd, just not one with an os installed on it. Not too sure if Linux will boot off the external hdd tho. |
Spacemannz (808) | ||
| 299406 | 2004-12-03 03:17:00 | Does the laptop allow cold booting from a USB device? If not, it might be tricky. | Graham L (2) | ||
| 299407 | 2004-12-03 03:44:00 | So I take it that I cant install Grub on the internal drive and then boot linux from the external usb..... Oh well. I guess I can just set aside a partition for root on the main internal drive and then use the external for extra storage.... Anyways, this is not a which distro is better question but, whats a good KDE based distro these days. I've been using FC3, but I'd rather run a KDE one. I'm not skilled enough for something like Gentoo/Slackware though..... Is Yoper any good? Ash |
Ashley Matthews (550) | ||
| 299408 | 2004-12-03 04:00:00 | Hi Ashley There was a discussion on this thread (pressf1.pcworld.co.nz) about booting off an external USB drive that you might find useful. |
Jen C (20) | ||
| 299409 | 2004-12-03 04:04:00 | >I've been using FC3 I didn't refresh my page before my previous post and missed your last post. Fedora Core ships with KDE on the install discs. You can easily add it by using system-config-packages and then selecting all the KDE stuff. When you next boot up the machine, at the login page if you click on the Session button you will be able to select KDE to load. Yoper also comes with KDE by default, and it is a lovely distro but you cannot customise the install like you can with FC3 - it is all or nothing with the packages. However, you can download any extra packages you like easily enough using the Yoper synaptic package manager. |
Jen C (20) | ||
| 299410 | 2004-12-03 04:27:00 | Try Mandrake 10. You can get a set of 3 CDs from DSE for $4.95. I'm not saying you can't boot from the USB, but Grub or Lilo have to be able to "see" the USB disk without any OS elements installed. They rely on the I/O subroutines contained in the BIOS to access disks. If the computer's BIOS does have an option to boot from a USB device, there might be a good chance (if USB2 allows it --- I don't know ;-)). But if there's no such option, I doubt it. :D But it wouldn't do any harm to try. As long as you know how to restore the MS boot stuff if an accident happens, what can you lose? |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 299411 | 2004-12-03 05:08:00 | Some BIOS's allow booting from USB - Some dont. Either way if you're wanting to install Linux on the external HDD - That's fine, on a couple of conditions (If it cant boot from USB): Your /boot partition needs to be on your HDD, and your kernel needs the likes of scsi/usb/filesystem/whatever to be built into the kernel. Fedora doesnt do this AFAIK, rather loads modules for a ton of things. You can boot WinXP off the External HDD if your PC allows booting from USB, Just like you can do a complete install of Linux... If it allows booting from USB! I would prefer to do something like Slackware, or ideally Gentoo (Even using binary packages) because you have more control with the layout... Im honestly not sure how fedora would cope with it if you cant boot from USB. Grub itself _cannot_ boot from USB, hence why you need a kernel with USB/SCSI support built-in (No good it trying to load usb support from modules on the USB drive ;-)) & /boot partition on your HDD Cheers Chill. |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
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