install to external usb hard drive

[Ferdes Fides]

Hello,

There were some search items regarding this but so old it said to open a new topic.
Installing to an external flash drive used the whole drive.  No problem booting up.

Installing to an external hard drive used only one partition and bootup was stopped
in process.  Apparently a copy of Windows needs to be on the external drive as well
as being bootable before installation of PCLinux and the Grub interface on the external
drive.  Then the external drive will boot and Windows or LINUX will start.  This is
according to an old post.

My question is will use of the whole external drive for installation resolve the need for
a bootable Windows partition on the drive for the Grub to work, and it will boot like the
flash drive installation I did ?

Is there any other way to start PCLinux from a single partition on an external hard drive
without a bootable Windows installation on the same hard drive ?


Thanks for your responses.

patrick013

[thorper]

I'm not 100% sure of what you are asking but you can create a bootable external usb drive that contains only PCLinuxOS. You have to change the grub on the external drive to only point to that drive and you have to change the BIOS on the machine you are booting from to boot from a usb device, other than that it will work just like any internal drive. You don't need any windows bootable partition for this.

Creating bootable external usb drives is a great way of making use of old drives that have been removed from laptops

[Ferdes Fides]

You have to change the grub on the external drive to only point to that drive and you have to change the BIOS on the machine you are booting from to boot from a usb device, other than that it will work just like any internal drive.

Hello,

And thanks for the response.  I press escape at bootup and the machine lets me select a drive to boot
from so there is no problem there booting the usb device.

Where do I change the grub ?  Is that part of the final install screen ?  When I  installed it before I didn't
change the grub and it hung up on boot.  It also stopped some other program I had on the disk but in another
partition from booting up after I deleted my PCLinux installation.  I hope changing the grub solves that.  The
grub tried to boot PClinux but couldn't, since it was deleted, and then it stopped this other partition from booting
after I deleted the PCLinux install I had.  I'll try to change the grub at installation then.  I tried to mark a partition active and let things boot from that setting.  There's really nothing messed up at present but it doesn't appear the grub is going to let me boot LINUX and then change the partition setting to active or nonactive if I want another system to start on the external drive.  This is going to take a little time to figure out but I think LINUX only is going to boot as the other partitions are ignored or blocked out by the grub.

I wish they had a selector on the external drive to select which partition(s) to boot from at bootup other than
the grub.  Can't figure out how the grub could stop the boot if the LINUX partition is deleted.  That is a little
messed up.

Thanks for any ideas you might have.


patrick013