open SUSE on External HDD

[sanjuacharya]

I have a Sony Vaio laptop:
2.0 GHz dual core
4 GB RAM
140 GB HDD

I was running out out of space so I bought a 1TB WD My Book external hard drive.
Plus for backup.

I was trying to act smart and installed openSUSE 11.1 on the external HDD;. I didn't install or format anything on my primary HDD. Anyway it worked out, but not in a way I thought it would.
I had to go in BIOS, enable external boot, my 1st boot device to external . .. and when I boot I get options if I want Vista, floppy or open Suse. . . no problem there.
But if I try to boot off of my primary HDD . .it gives me this:

grub loading stage1.5

and stays there because it can't find it . . ..
I think it haas something to do with the MBR ... I dunno.
If I plug my 1TB to my dads pc . ..it shows up as removable disk (he has XP) and it says to insert something into the drive.

All I want to do is to boot to Vista directly without plugging in my 1TB to do so. . and I want to format my 1TB so it can show up in windows explorer. I know its a DUMB mistake, and I didn't lose data, sad thing though, I have SOME of it backed up.

[whych]

Have a look at:
Fixing vista multiboot with openSUSE - openSUSE Forums

[gogalthorp]

Vista will not recognize a Linux partition. (Big Surprise )

You will need a driver to see an ext partition from a Windoz explorer window

Access Linux partitions (ext2, ext3) from Windows Vista | Linux Operating System - Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch

[sanjuacharya]

Thanks for the links guys. . .really and truly helped.

I ran a Vista recovery console, fixed MBR through cmd.
Booting is no problem!!

For my 1TB I used G-Parted in the end and I got through!

Thanks a lot, you saved my pc and memories. . .I'm gonna back it ALL up and next time I use linux, its with a desktop, and I have Ubuntu so ya. . . .

Thanks again.