Which distro for USB Hard Drive?

[lauroy8]

I just finished trying to install Ubuntu onto a 60gb usb hard drive. It would not install Grub and I kept getting an error. I ended up reading that it will not install grub to sdb as long as there is a hd0 on the same system. What other distros are available that would install as easily as Ubuntu is supposed to on a usb hard drive.

My system is a Toshiba laptop with a 1.83ghz core duo processor and 1gb of ram. My main requirement is that the wireless networking is functional. I knew that it was with Ubuntu because I had it working with the LiveCD setup.

I just want to have a linux desktop to learn and tinker with as well as use Open Office, email, internet surfing and instant messaging. The video adapter in this is an Nvidia Go 7300.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Odyssey]

Have you considered installing Ubunutu to your portable hdd, but using the USB drive for your /home directory? Ubuntu does not require much space for the install (/) and /swap, so unless your port. hdd is out of space, it shouldn't be an issue (and if it is, you might well be able to clear some space by archiving less current stuff to the USB drive also.)

I hope that you will get some support in this forum by those who are more knowledgeable than I. It really is distressing that some posts go unassisted.

[lauroy8]

The drive I want to install Linux onto is a 60gb external, USB 2.0, HDD. The BIOS on my laptop supports booting from USB. I was finally able to get Grub to install by using the 6.1 Alternate iso of Ubuntu but then when I went to boot up it said that Grub could not mount the drive which was strange because that was the drive Grub was installed on. I don't care what distro I install, just one that will boot from my external drive and give me a desktop to mess around with and wireless networking. Thanks for your help. I'm sure someone here will point me in the right direction.

[devils casper]

plug-in External drive and boot up from Ubuntu Desktop CD (LiveCD). mount / (root) partition of Ubuntu installed in External Disk.
post the contents of /boot/grub/menu.lst and device.map files and output of 'sudo fdisk -l' command here.







Casper