Greetings.

Firstly I am no expert with Linu. I have used it here and there a few times when I had a spare computer.

I now want to give it another try but only have one machine, which runs XP. Now I want to install Mandriva on my external USB hard disk, however the installer does not see the external drive. Is it possible to work arround this?

Another point is, that as I remember, is in order at boot time for the computer to know which OS to boot, the boot LILO thingy needs to be written to the internal hard drive. Ideally it would be great if the computer could boot off the external hard disk first if found, other wise carry on booting with the internal XP. I noticed that on my Sony Vaio BIOS, there is not option for a USB boot sequence. So I guess this is not possible.

Yet I found that on the Mandriva website they have a product with linux installe on an external hard drive. How does that work out without writting something to the internal hard disk? The idea is that you can plug that external hard disk anywhere and boot from it. Surely you would not need to change anything on the internal hard disk of every computer you connect your external hard disk to right?


Thanks in advance,

Aristotel

OK...i looked at the Mandriva site some more and found that the product I was referring to is called GlobeTrotter. I also noticed that it says that it comes with a Mandriva Bootable CD to be used with computers that cannot boot off the USB attached devices. So that explains that part.

I guess that answers both my questions. even if i could install mandriva on my external USB drive, I would not be able to boot off it as my laptop's BIOS does not let me boot off the external hard disk......great



Great thread e?


Ciao!!!

The Mandriva GlobeTrotter come installed with Mandriva Version 10.1 not 2005LE. I have a USB hd on which I have places 10.1. It works great. I also have installed 2005LE. 2005LE requires that you use the ext2 option when installing on a USB drive. It used the 10.1 kernel to install but installs the newer kernel. I and many others have had problems making 2005LE boot from a USB drive. I even made the rescue disk from mkrescue command but have as yet not gotten 2005LE to boot.

I have presently have Mandriva 10.1, PCLinuxOS .8 & .91 and Kanotix installed and working on external USB drives. PCLinuxOS .91 and Kanotix both required that the initrd.img file be modified in order to boot. I suspect that to get Mandriva 2005LE to boot that the initrd.img file will also have to be reworked.

For reference I have a Dell Dimension 3000, Pentium 4, 2.8Ghz, 512MB, 80GB main drive and severa 80GB USB drives.

Try Version 10.1 I am sure it will work for you.

Jim

Sorry I did not read your post as well as I should have. After you install on the USB drive you can use the install disk in the rescue mode to create either/or rescue boot disk or CD. I did make a CD for myself but since my system has the option to boot from USB I use it.

Jim