boot linux on a usb/firewire external hard disk: which linux is the best to do this?

[mic46]

hi there

 

I just bought a new laptop.

Some blokes told me it's possible to boot linux from an external device and I bought an external iomega hard disk.

 

could you please suggest me the best way to do this and which is the best linux version to install?

 

thanks in advance

 

cheers

 

mic

[xDamox]

Hi,

 

If you installed Fedora Core you're external hard drive should be picked up and when you come to the partitioning screen just work on

you're external hard drive, the correct initrd image will be created with USB boot support enabled.

[kabifff]

It's possible to do, but I've screwed up many a computer trying to do that.

First, if you have a USB drive, don't count on it to be running very quickly. Let me explain:

A processor and it's speed is made up of three components: The Gigahertz speed, the L2 or Level 2 Cache, and the frontside bus. The cache is the chunk of data your CPU can handle, the gigahertz processes it, and the Frontside Bus or FSB sends it to the memory and the rest of the computer. Your USB, even USB 2.0 or "high-speed usb" runs through that frontside bus on your chip. That means you have an entire operating system, plus all of the USB protocols, running through that small bus. EVen though it's advertised at running "UP TO 480 MB/s" it very rarely can, because of all the other junk running in the background.

To send an entire OS through the USB and FSB is going to be very slow and time consuming. It's easiest to partition your drive into 4 parts (three for linux, one for windows) or buying another separate internal drive.

 

Firewire, on the other hand, doesn't have this problem. That's why firewire is so much nicer and faster, even though it's advertised at 400 mb/s instead of 480. If you have a firewire drive, it won't be as much of an issue, but it's possible that you'll still run into issues with your bootloader, and your external hard drive will ALWAYS have to be plugged in to boot, whether you want windows or Linux.

[grep65535]

i found all the info i needed here: [/url][url=http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/09/19/al...uxos-minimezip/]http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/09/19/al...uxos-minimezip/ ://http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/0...xos-minimezip/ ://http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/0...xos-minimezip/ ://http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/0...xos-minimezip/ ://http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/0...xos-minimezip/ for that sort of issue