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Thread: Boot Linux from an external drive?

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    Environ'mentalist Zadock's Avatar
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    Boot Linux from an external drive?

    I bought myself a HDD enclosure last week, an Icy Box, and put my old 200Gb Seagate Barracuda in it (which is in surprisingly good nick).I'm just wondering how easy it would be to set it up for dual booting? i.e. having windows on my internal drive and when I want to use Linux have it booting from the icy box. Has anyone tried this?

    i was thinking of booting Ubuntu from it, 7.10. which version would be the best for my current system? (<-- see my system). x64 compix?

    Also the enclosure I bought came with an e-sata bracket to, which might speed things up a bit.

    Is this a good idea or a lot of hassle?

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    yes it will work, but i'd suggest you use the 8.04 beta instead, given your graphics card

    also, keep a close eye on where the installer wants to put the boot loader. i'd recommend disconnecting the windows hard disk during install, to make sure it only installs the boot loader to its local disk - then go into your bios & set USB boot priority higher than internal disks. that should make it all go fine.

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    Blimey that was a quick response, Cheers Directhex.

    I just had a quick look on the website and it says 8.04 is due out in 10 days, so I may wait until then to get it.

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    I'd advise further against doing this,

    running/using usb disks for storage is fine, and is actually much better now for use due to UID changes, but and this is a tricky one, on USB disks grub can get in a real mess, (less now that hd references are not used) due to plugging/unplugging of the disk and how the bios/OS recognises this.

    You less likley to have problems now, but still there is greater potential for problems than using a "static" disk
    It is Inevitable.....


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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    I see your point here but my icy box is going to be pretty static i.e. its just going to sit on the shelf next to my desk.

    Just been looking at the 8.04 notes and it looks like the installation disk makes it easier to dual boot so I may consider doing it from my internal drive anyway.

    We'll see.

    thanks for the adivce guys.

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    Quote Originally Posted by ikonia View Post
    I'd advise further against doing this,

    running/using usb disks for storage is fine, and is actually much better now for use due to UID changes, but and this is a tricky one, on USB disks grub can get in a real mess, (less now that hd references are not used) due to plugging/unplugging of the disk and how the bios/OS recognises this.

    You less likley to have problems now, but still there is greater potential for problems than using a "static" disk
    it really ought to be fine - consider how many "pendrive" distros there are

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    Or.... why not just disable your internal drive in the BIOS or shuffle around the boot order when you want to use Linux. Pretty much all BIOSes will allow you to do this, and it reduces the risk of something breaking.

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    pen drive distros arn't setup to dual boot boxes.
    It is Inevitable.....


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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    Quote Originally Posted by b0redom View Post
    Or.... why not just disable your internal drive in the BIOS or shuffle around the boot order when you want to use Linux. Pretty much all BIOSes will allow you to do this, and it reduces the risk of something breaking.
    there's really no risk outside of boot loaders being overwritten - which will only occur at install time. and that applies for *any* multi-boot setup, linux or otherwise.

    whereas changing bios settings per-boot has a high risk of forgetting & that forgetting causing a problem (e.g. windows not being on the drive letter it thinks it should be)

    the more things change, the more likely things are to break

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    Quote Originally Posted by ikonia View Post
    pen drive distros arn't setup to dual boot boxes.
    yeah, but what's being suggested it pretty much a "pen drive" install on an icybox - there's no enormous reason NOT to, and as long as grub stays on the usb disk and doesn't even think of trying to boot windows, then that's what you get. as long as the windows disk isn't physically connected during install, that's what should happen

    at a guess, the usb disk should come up as sda (hd0) when being booted from - with the windows disk cleanly appearing as a mountable sdb1

    mild guesswork. i have no functional big usb pendrives to test with right now

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    no no, your spot on, if grub actually goes on the USB disk for a standalone BIG pen drive, then spot on , not a problem, I had the impression the USB disk was going to be a linux disk for a dual boot system, as in grub on the boot disk and linux on the USB
    It is Inevitable.....


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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    Cheers guys, sorry for the confusion there.

    Yeah what I meant was to use the external drive as a seperate boot device like with a usb pen. I'll probably put USB high on the boot priorty and then just turn the drive on when I want to boot from it.

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    slightly off track but what are the best pen drive distros? I have a 4GB USB Stick and want to install a Linux Distro on it. One that will run well and look pretty good as well so not Puppy or DSL etc.

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    Re: Boot Linux from an external drive?

    Quote Originally Posted by slypie View Post
    slightly off track but what are the best pen drive distros? I have a 4GB USB Stick and want to install a Linux Distro on it. One that will run well and look pretty good as well so not Puppy or DSL etc.
    with 4 gig you have enoguh space for a "real" distro like ubuntu

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