Ubuntu on an external?

So id like to install ubuntu on my external HDD. I will set my bios to boot from removable media first and then the internal HDD. And so, the idea is, anytime i have my external plugged in and i power up, ill boot into ubuntu, else boot into vista.

I know this is possible but how do i go about the GRUB installation. where should grub be installed. Im really reluctant about installing grub on my internal HDD.

Help please. thanks

 

I've only heard of others doing this, but you can install GRUB onto your External HD rather than overwrite the MBR (which is easy to correct btw especially if you possess a retail copy of Vista.) Someone else needs to chime in here on the rest maybe, but I would say plug in the external, go thru the install to the external drive, and when it asks where to install GRUB, do it on the extHD. That way unplugged, Vista would be unaware and just come right up....plugged in, you should get a GRUB menu for Ubuntu with Vista as an option. Anyone else? But that's what I would do.

 

OH and make sure your Mobo supports USB device booting. You have to put this first

 

What flipfire said, all depends on being able to boot that way in the first place

 

That sounds extremely...... clever. I think I'll try that myself. Would there be any drop in speed in the external HDD?

 

eSata baby !! not much, it'll run mostly out of ram anyway methinks. I guess large read write might lag a bit, but it will be faster than a liveCD by a mile.

 

An external 5400rpm SATA USB drive can do about 20-25mb/s transfer speed

A internal HD can do up to 60mb/s

So yes it will be slower but it should be much faster than the LiveCD

 

I think it will only be noticeably slower when booting.
After that, there isnt large data transfer from the OS.
Of corse, acceess time will come into play, anyone know how the access time for external HDD compares with that for internal ?

 

Access times are the same
Internal:


External:

 

So wait a minute, why not just dual boot? Am I missing something?

 

The difference, my friend, is sheer elegance.

Pull out the USB when you want to boot Vista/XP to play a few games, Push in the USB for Ubuntu, which you can carry around. It's like computer the size of your palm.

By the way, is there a online tutorial for this with Ubuntu and XP?

 

Thanks for all the responses guys, but im still not too sure about this. I was poking around yesterday in the ubuntu forums and read something interesting.

Just like was suggested, someone installed ubuntu + grub on their external. Later when they tried booting w/o the external plugged in, they received a grub error. Someone said that this was because even though grub is on the external, it writes its location to the mbr. Upon post, the mbr now points to grub on another storage device and so it goes there. The lack of "there" being plugged in has triggered a problem.

perhaps its easier if i just post a link.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=776569&highlight=external

thanks in advance.

 

I've been toying around with the idea of putting linux on a thumbdrive.

 

ah...easy to fix, but that is the piece I didn't get.....knew there was something missing. Don't think that can be gotten around, doesn't the BIOS look first to MBR?, but you could have Vista as the default OS, install Grub to the MBR.....when it's not plugged in, just let it go into Vista. When it's plugged in, select Ubuntu. Remember, the MBR is easy to fix by several methods...I can do it in about 30 seconds.

EDIT: my 1300th post....no wonder I can't get any work done.....lol

 

It's easy to do. Remove the xp hard drive, plug the usb drive, load live cd, do installation as usual, turn off laptop, put xp drive back, choose whatever drive you want to boot first to boot up either the internal hd or the usb one. It works just as fast as if it was installed on the internal drive.

 

have you actually sucessfully done it before Ayle? would it also happen to work on other PC's?

 

If the hard drive is esata and not USB, then you'll get the same level of performance as you would using the internal drive, if not better.

 

Yep it work just as good as if it was installed internally. I have not tried using the drive on my other conputer as it was installed on a intel/nvidia while the other pc is amd/ati....

 

Will the liveCD work better as liveUSB? In terms of speed and loading

 

i'm booting xubuntu off of my cf card using a expresscard cf adapter. during install i recommend letting xubuntu automatically partition the drive on the next screen click advanced and then change (hd0) to (hd1). it shud work. If your worried about write cycles just disable swap in installation

 

yes i found it works a lot faster running it from USB. I made a post about how to run it from usb stick here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187188&page=3

 

So did where did you install grub? On your cf card or your internal?

 

hd1 = cf card
hd0 = internal
if you install grub to hd0, your internal hd will not boot without the cf card in the slot/adapter

by the way why would anyone want to boot ubuntu in persistance mode (live usb) its just rubbish, its not an os at all. you cant install and everything is soooooo slow lol

 

so if ubuntu is installed on the external and windows on your internal, and your external is NOT plugged in, do you still see grub? or does your laptop boot straight to windows?

 

you will only see grub if the external is set as first boot device in bios. if you want to boot xp, you can either set the external as first or second. if it is set at first then it wil boot straight to xp, if it is second it will boot to grub and from grub you can either boot to ubuntu or xp.

 

I'd very grateful if someone to decipher this?
GRUB?
Is it something specific to LINOX/UNIX platform?

I'm devising a plan how to run external HD with second operating system and knowledge of GRUB will be very helpful

 

GRUB is Ubuntu's boot loader, it loads Ubuntu and any other OS on the HDD.

 

I've installed ubuntu on my external hard drive, and made sure to install grub to my external drive also (sdb). Every time i boot from the drive though, i receive grub error 17. When i unplug the external, windows boots from the internal normally. Help me boot linux, thanks.

Here is my "sudo fdisk -l"

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfa8489dd

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       11675    93773824    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           11675       19458    62514176    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           11675       19458    62513152    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3be71f61

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1       50227   403440430    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2           50228       60801    84935655    5  Extended
/dev/sdb5           50228       60365    81433453+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb6           60366       60801     3502138+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

and here is my "menu.lst"

Code:

# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
#            grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
#            grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
#            and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/.

## default num
# Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and
# the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.
#
# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
# WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not use 'savedefault' or your
# array will desync and will not let you boot your system.
default		0

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout		10

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
#hiddenmenu

# Pretty colours
#color cyan/blue white/blue

## password ['--md5'] passwd
# If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive editing
# control (menu entry editor and command-line)  and entries protected by the
# command 'lock'
# e.g. password topsecret
#      password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/
# password topsecret

#
# examples
#
# title		Windows 95/98/NT/2000
# root		(hd0,0)
# makeactive
# chainloader	+1
#
# title		Linux
# root		(hd0,1)
# kernel	/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro
#

#
# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below

## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro
# kopt=root=UUID=72b3e8b0-1692-47e1-8f7d-c190a5f2dbf5 ro

## Setup crashdump menu entries
## e.g. crashdump=1
# crashdump=0

## default grub root device
## e.g. groot=(hd0,0)
# groot=(hd1,4)

## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. alternative=true
##      alternative=false
# alternative=true

## should update-grub lock alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. lockalternative=true
##      lockalternative=false
# lockalternative=false

## additional options to use with the default boot option, but not with the
## alternatives
## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5
# defoptions=quiet splash

## should update-grub lock old automagic boot options
## e.g. lockold=false
##      lockold=true
# lockold=false

## Xen hypervisor options to use with the default Xen boot option
# xenhopt=

## Xen Linux kernel options to use with the default Xen boot option
# xenkopt=console=tty0

## altoption boot targets option
## multiple altoptions lines are allowed
## e.g. altoptions=(extra menu suffix) extra boot options
##      altoptions=(recovery) single
# altoptions=(recovery mode) single

## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst
## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the
## alternative kernel options
## e.g. howmany=all
##      howmany=7
# howmany=all

## should update-grub create memtest86 boot option
## e.g. memtest86=true
##      memtest86=false
# memtest86=true

## should update-grub adjust the value of the default booted system
## can be true or false
# updatedefaultentry=false

## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options
## can be true or false
# savedefault=false

## ## End Default Options ##

title		Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root		(hd1,4)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=72b3e8b0-1692-47e1-8f7d-c190a5f2dbf5 ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
quiet

title		Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd1,4)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=72b3e8b0-1692-47e1-8f7d-c190a5f2dbf5 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

title		Ubuntu 8.04, memtest86+
root		(hd1,4)
kernel		/boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title		Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title		Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader)
root		(hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader	+1