Linux boot from USB HD?

October 1, 2006 11:35 PM

LinuxN00bFilter: Linux and/or dual boot from external USB HD (not pen/flash drive, but a real hard drive) -- how?

Tried installing Mandriva Linux on my external USB hard drive (which already has a primary NTFS partition). The appropriate partitions were apparently created, boatloads of files were copied, and then it asked me where to install GRUB. I picked what I believed to be the boot partition (the smaller of the 2 non-swap linux partitions) and, of course, it didn't work. Tried setting the boot flag on this same partition, and that didn't work either (though I got a different error message, which I took to be a good sign).

Obviously I'm doing something wrong, but I haven't been able to find any useful info on how to go about this. Lots of articles/wikis/faqs about resizing partitions on one's native hard drive, but absolutely nothing about how to install on & boot from an external USB hard drive.

Any advice and/or pointers to tutorials, information, instructions, etc., would be greatly appreciated.

posted by treepour to computers & internet (5 comments total)

First, you should check to see if your BIOS is looking at the USB ports for bootable devices. Check it next time you start up and make sure USB is on the top of the boot order list, or that "boot other device" is on the top.

If that's not the problem (and it's possible - but not clear, that it's not - from your message) I don't have any further help to offer. I'm sure other people do.
posted by fake at 11:46 PM on October 1, 2006

fake, sorry for not mentioning the BIOS settings. I did set my BIOS to boot the USB drive first.
posted by treepour at 12:32 AM on October 2, 2006

You need to be sure that the partition you are telling GRUB is your boot partition, actually contains a bootable kernel image. How would you know this? Well, quoting from the GRUB HOWTO and Troubleshooter:

"The boot partition or sub-folder will normally have a vmlinuz file (the kernel) maybe a initrd image file and normally these files link to another vmlinuz or initrd file like vmlinuz-2.6.7 and you may have other entries due to re-compiles you have done."
posted by paulsc at 1:27 AM on October 2, 2006

Maybe this will help you? It's for Ubuntu, not Mandriva, but you may well be striking the same issue (kernel USB support not present in initial ramdisk image).
posted by flabdablet at 6:54 AM on October 2, 2006

Thanks, all. This has turned out to be a much thornier issue than I'd imagined (i.e., seems to be what flabdablet suggested). I must say I'm a bit perplexed at the lack of information/support about this sort of thing -- installing on an external drive seems like the "safest" & thus most intuitively-appealing route for anyone who's timid about messing with their internal drive's partitions.
posted by treepour at 2:40 AM on October 3, 2006