Installing on a USB drive

[kputem]

Afraid that I am lost!!

I would like to install PCLinuxOS on either an external USB drive or on a USB memory stick, but I can't find how to.

There are plenty of instructions on how to make a liveUSB, just like a liveCD, but that's not what I want to do.

What I want to do is to actually install PCLinuxOS on the USB drive, as on a hard drive, so that I can add updates, add new programs, save files, and so on.

Even the PCLinuxOS' MakeUSB program seems to be for making a live uSB. 

It would be the main KDE desktop version and would only be used on the computer on which it was installed.

Can it be done? If it can, please will someone point me to the appropriate instructions?

Many thanks.

Keith

[Old-Polack]

Afraid that I am lost!!

I would like to install PCLinuxOS on either an external USB drive or on a USB memory stick, but I can't find how to.

There are plenty of instructions on how to make a liveUSB, just like a liveCD, but that's not what I want to do.

What I want to do is to actually install PCLinuxOS on the USB drive, as on a hard drive, so that I can add updates, add new programs, save files, and so on.

Even the PCLinuxOS' MakeUSB program seems to be for making a live uSB.  

It would be the main KDE desktop version and would only be used on the computer on which it was installed.

Can it be done? If it can, please will someone point me to the appropriate instructions?

Many thanks.

Keith

The installation to a USB external drive is the same as for any other hard drive except you select the option to install to a USB hard drive. I have seven such installations on this machine. If your BIOS allows to boot from a USB hard drive, the drive must be plugged in before the machine is turned on, and the USB drive has to be set as the boot drive, before doing the installation from the liveCD. This is necessary in order for the menu.lst entries to be correct, from the start, and not need later editing. If grub is then installed to the MBR of the USB hard drive, the OS will boot on any machine capable of booting a USB hard drive.

If the machine does not have the USB hard drive boot option, the installation can still be done to work on that machine, if a small boot partition is created on the internal drive, and grub is also installed to the internal drive. The machine I'm typing this from is a 2002 Compaq, without USB boot options of any kind, but I can boot any of the OS on the external drives by using the kernel from the internal hard drive installation's boot partition, and selecting the / partitions of the USB installations in the /boot/grub/menu.lst stanzas.

Give the specs of your machine, and the Bios options available, and it should be easy to give more detailed information as to which approach is most applicable.

[kputem]

old-polack.

Many thanks for your reply and the help.

You asked for the specs. Here they are.

Motherboard: Pegatron M2N68-LA
Processor: AMD AthlonII x3 64bit 2.7GHz
Memory: 3GB
Graphics Chip: Nvidia GF6150 1407MB
Audio: Realtek ALC662 chip
SATA Hard Drive
6USB slots
Hard Drive: 500GB
OS: Windows7 on a main partition, with a rescue partiton also on the drive. I've made rescue disks, but there's no W7 installation disks supplied

Looking at the motherboard manufacture's site, there is no mention of being able to boot from a USB drive.

Looking in the BIOS, it lists:
1st boot  CDROM group
2nd boot  Hard Drive group
3rd boot  Floppy group (there is no floppy fitted)
4th boot  Network group (perhaps a USB drive would appear here?)

For further information, at the moment, I am not allowed to do anything inside the computer.   Can't fit a second internal hard drive as I did in my previous machine, can't fit more memory, upgrade the graphics or sound, can't alter the installed OS to dual boot. That's why an external USB drive is the only answer.

Hope this helps, and thanks again.

Keith

[thorper]

I followed the instructions given in issue #27 November 2008 of the PCLinuxOS magazine and installed 2009.2. My installation on an external USB drive worked without problems and I am able to keep it up to date and have recently updated it to KDE4 for testing.

[kputem]

thorper.

Thank you for pointing me to the November 2008 magazine article.

It looks very interesting and comprehensive.

Cheers

Keith