Comments on: How to Install Linux on an External Hard Drive

By: halfmoon

halfmoon — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:32:03 +0000

Update–contacted Toshiba support found out how to create the recovery disk inside windows. A bit different than what i was formally used to…guess its my fault for not being on top of technology….lol..thanks toshiba..

By: halfmoon

halfmoon — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:40:08 +0000

Well>basically i have the same problems you guys are having. But atleast you didnt get screwed like me. When i bought my laptop the recovery partition installed was apparently for a different version of windows and i cannot recover a mb because of it. So now im deciding whether to jam back to BB and return my overpriced hunk of toshiba that has no recovery disks and the wrong fricken partition installed. –note–My Asus laptop from before came with all recovery disks–Thank you ASUS!!! Oh and i cannot for the life of me get the wireless to work, compiling RTL drivers to no avail, even ndiswrapper fails…basically reading in forums in other places people have been having the same problems with the Satellites trying to get linux distros up on em. I wish microsoft would quit being such a prick with the way they setup and desighn they’re systems.

All ranting aside,
I also tried 3 different ways to install linux. The first worked with ubuntu creating the live cd. But as stated before wireless is dead, so i eth0′ed it which works.

But, i seem to run into the 2 problems. 1 Recovering the MBR no go since problem stated above ie (wrong windows version recovery partition)=Cannot delete ubuntu or grub out of MBR now. And…in ubuntu no external hard drive showing up. Go to windows looked for it found it, installed ubuntu on external hard drive. Fails to boot windows locks it out and boots up instead. Now i know the problem could be with the way i compiled the installation. BUT, i auto it from the ubuntu live cd and it should work considering i got everything to work on the mini NB200 i had b4 from TOSHIBA…the only piece of equipment i have gotten to work without problems –minus sound drivers– That was 32 bit based, my new system is 64 bit based. Everything just seemed to work on the 32 bit based system i had but on this new 64 bit based system everything seems to just NOT work…wonder what the deal is…

Can anyone point out something i might be able to do to get things working b4 i take this thing back?

By: Rasheed

Rasheed — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:19:42 +0000

Hi there,
i have a question regarding removing internal hard drive, since i have a laptop i dont feel comfortable with opening it up and probably damaging it… is there another way around it? BTW my BIOS recognizes my external hard drive and i can boot from it.
thanks in advance

By: srikanth

srikanth — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:09:47 +0000

I tried to install Linux in my external hard drive but it is not detecting the external Hard disk…i mean Linux asking where to install it but i never see any drives in the section…i removed internal hard disk and attached External Hard disk…

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:33 +0000

Can i make a partition on my external HDD and put Linux on one part and keep my data on the over half?

When booting with the CD with linux on it, when i have my external HDD pluged in will it ask me or allow me to choose which partition to apply it to?

Thanks in advance

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:04:41 +0000

@ALi

Reboot your computer from the USB drive and Linux will boot if it was installed correctly.

By: ALi

ALi — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:30:36 +0000

ok, so im done installing linux on my external hard drive. But how do i make my computer use linux???? I have connected my usb to my computer. What do i do next??? PLEASE RESPONddDDDD

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:01:13 +0000

@Robert

You can partition the drive with gparted. I think it gives several options for partitioning the drive when installing Ubuntu though. I recommend asking on http://ubuntuforums.org/ because someone there might have more current information. I haven’t done this since I wrote this post.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:51:29 +0000

Hi
I have an external hard drive 320GB and I am trying to install Ubuntu Linux.But I donot want to install linux on the whole hard drive..how do I partion in the following order 160GB as linux and the rest for storage under XP.
I am stuck on this partion screen
/dev/sda like 16GB and the rest approx 304GB as ubuntu which I do not want

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:48:43 +0000

@Allen Meyers

Thanks for the feedback.

I recommend physically pulling your existing hard drive out of the computer so that the only hard drive attached to the computer is the new external hard drive that you want to install Linux on. If Ubuntu detects your existing internal hard drive, it will probably overwrite the MBR.

If Ubuntu writes over your internal hard drives MBR, it can be fixed, but it’s just one more thing to have to deal with. That’s why I recommend just physically removing the internal drive during the installation process.