Best Distro for External Drive

[boysha]

Hi,

I need some help from people who know...
I wanted to install Linux (best for this purpose) on an external hard drive so that I can plug it in at home and at work when needed.
Can someone tell me what would be the best Distro for that purpose and if there is anything else I should know to make my life easier? Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Neb

[b2bwild]

Hello and Welcome to Linux.

I guess you want to install linux natively, not live.

Many Linux distros can be installed on USB HD Drive or USB Flash Dirve
Heres a good Site - PenDrive Linux
for tutorials.

The easies way is with Linux Mint/Ubuntu using USB Startup disk creator.

[boysha]

Thanks so much!
I am so glad because I already use Mint on my other computer and I really like it.
All the best,
Neb

[devils casper]

Does your machine's BIOS support boot up from External Devices?
You can install any Linux distro in External disk. Make sure to install Boot Loader in MBR of External disk only else installer will install Boot Loader in MBR of internal disk and you won't be able to boot any OS without plugging in External Disk.
To make things easy, just disable internal disk and install Linux ( any distro ) in External Disk.

[boysha]

Thank you. I was wondering why wouldn't it just be a simple install on the external drive.
I will do it tonight.
Cheers!
Neb

[devils casper]

Do let us know how it goes. Good Luck !

[jmadero]

wait, there will be a problem with GRUB though. If you install it on your external and then your external isn't plugged in your GRUB will be missing because it'll be installed on your external instead of internal, you'll need to use super grub to fix this

[devils casper]

wait, there will be a problem with GRUB though. If you install it on your external and then your external isn't plugged in your GRUB will be missing because it'll be installed on your external instead of internal, you'll need to use super grub to fix this

As I mentioned earlier, if you diable Internal disk in BIOS, there won't be any problem. GRUB will be installed in Enternal disk and Internal disk will be un-touched.
If you plug-in External disk, GRUB Menu will appear and Linux will boot up fine. OS installed in Internal disk will boot up fine without External disk.

For dual boot setup, you have to edit menu.lst file ( or grub.conf ) to add an entry of OS installed in Internal disk. Thats very easy. Both Disks will be independent of each other.

[jmadero]

sorry about that dc, did'nt see that you had already brought this issue up

[devils casper]

No need to say sorry.