Tyothai

My purpose is to install SUSE linux to an external Hard drive and boot from it.

I was told by several people that If I were to run an operating system from an external Hard drive that it would be best to use firewire. The reason being that even though usb 2.0 is quoted for a higher speed, firewire is infact faster and is much more suited to what I wanted to use my external hard drive for. I called my bios manufacturer and asked if my specific bios chip is capable of booting from a firewire device. The answer was no. From this I found two alternatives of being able to boot on firewire.

The first is this.

It is a guide about how to create a floppy with grub installed on it and just enough kernel to get the rest of the boot process to transfer over to the Firewire Hard drive. The problem with this is that I am still very uneducated and don't know how to do half what the writer of the article is talking about.


The second is to find a Firewire PCI card with a OPT ROM chip on it, which will tell my bios that there is a bootable device on it and alow me to boot from it. The problem with this is that the PCI cards cost $200 and I don't have that kind of cash.

I cannot afford space-wise to just create another partition on my internal hard drive.

So heres where I am at.

I would like to know FIRST if it is true that if I want to run an OS from my external hard drive that I need the connection to be via firewire. (I would preffer facts and experierences over opinions in answering this question.[I've heard so many things])

And second. If it is true that firewire is really the only way to go, should I abandon all hope due to the difficulty of what said article is trying to do and the cost of PCI firewire cards with an OPT ROM. or could one of you kindly simplify or explain the steps needed to do what the article said, or point me in the direction of where I can buy a cheap firewire opt rom card.


ANY help would bring so much awesome to my life right right now. I would and will appreciate greatly anything you have to offer on the situation.