Welcome to the Linux Foundation Forum!
Can I "Try" Linux by installing to an external HDD
CCFlyfisher
Posts: 5
This may be a stupid question and maybe it means I shouldn't "Try" Linux at all, but is it possible? I have a 500GB external drive sitting around that's well over half empty, and if it is possible, it would make the transition smooth I think.
0
Comments
-
Yes, that should work fine.
Note that some (older) computers don't support booting from USB devices though, you should check this in your BIOS. Installing and using Linux from the external harddrive should work fine anyway, but on computers that can't boot from USB devices, you would have to install a bootloader onto one of your internal harddrives in order to start up Linux.0 -
Regarding the boot loader...
A lot of OSs will install the boot loader (grub) of the first drive detected by the BIOS. Which will probably be the internal HD and not the USB. In my personal experience its best to have all other drives that you dont want linux to be install onto unplugged. You can specify other wise in most installs but better safe then sorry is what I say.
If you dont do that. And Grub (The bootloader) gets installed on a different drive it will totally flip out if you boot the computer without the USB drive plugged in. And by flip out and me no windows nor linux.0 -
You can run the live ubuntu cd and have a look around.
You can't save anything on it, but it would give you an idea of how it works.0 -
You can install ubuntu on an external hard drive, but the boot method can differ based upon your needs.
If you wish to have the external HD always connected to one computer then you can install it on the external and during the setup choose to install the bootloader on the first hard drive.
But if you wish to be able to move the hard drive to other systems then you will want to tell it to install the bootloader on the external harddrive, however to boot to it you will have to change your boot priority options in the bios of each computer you wish to boot it on.0
Categories
- All Categories
- 217 LFX Mentorship
- 217 LFX Mentorship: Linux Kernel
- 788 Linux Foundation IT Professional Programs
- 352 Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 177 Advanced Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 82 DevOps Engineer IT Professional Program
- 146 Cloud Native Developer IT Professional Program
- 137 Express Training Courses
- 137 Express Courses - Discussion Forum
- 6.2K Training Courses
- 46 LFC110 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 70 LFC131 Class Forum
- 42 LFD102 Class Forum
- 226 LFD103 Class Forum
- 18 LFD110 Class Forum
- 37 LFD121 Class Forum
- 18 LFD133 Class Forum
- 7 LFD134 Class Forum
- 18 LFD137 Class Forum
- 71 LFD201 Class Forum
- 4 LFD210 Class Forum
- 5 LFD210-CN Class Forum
- 2 LFD213 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 128 LFD232 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 2 LFD233 Class Forum
- 4 LFD237 Class Forum
- 24 LFD254 Class Forum
- 694 LFD259 Class Forum
- 111 LFD272 Class Forum
- 4 LFD272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 12 LFD273 Class Forum
- 146 LFS101 Class Forum
- 1 LFS111 Class Forum
- 3 LFS112 Class Forum
- 2 LFS116 Class Forum
- 4 LFS118 Class Forum
- 6 LFS142 Class Forum
- 5 LFS144 Class Forum
- 4 LFS145 Class Forum
- 2 LFS146 Class Forum
- 3 LFS147 Class Forum
- 1 LFS148 Class Forum
- 15 LFS151 Class Forum
- 2 LFS157 Class Forum
- 25 LFS158 Class Forum
- 7 LFS162 Class Forum
- 2 LFS166 Class Forum
- 4 LFS167 Class Forum
- 3 LFS170 Class Forum
- 2 LFS171 Class Forum
- 3 LFS178 Class Forum
- 3 LFS180 Class Forum
- 2 LFS182 Class Forum
- 5 LFS183 Class Forum
- 31 LFS200 Class Forum
- 737 LFS201 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 3 LFS201-JP クラス フォーラム
- 18 LFS203 Class Forum
- 130 LFS207 Class Forum
- 2 LFS207-DE-Klassenforum
- 1 LFS207-JP クラス フォーラム
- 302 LFS211 Class Forum
- 56 LFS216 Class Forum
- 52 LFS241 Class Forum
- 48 LFS242 Class Forum
- 38 LFS243 Class Forum
- 15 LFS244 Class Forum
- 2 LFS245 Class Forum
- LFS246 Class Forum
- 48 LFS250 Class Forum
- 2 LFS250-JP クラス フォーラム
- 1 LFS251 Class Forum
- 151 LFS253 Class Forum
- 1 LFS254 Class Forum
- 1 LFS255 Class Forum
- 7 LFS256 Class Forum
- 1 LFS257 Class Forum
- 1.2K LFS258 Class Forum
- 10 LFS258-JP クラス フォーラム
- 118 LFS260 Class Forum
- 159 LFS261 Class Forum
- 42 LFS262 Class Forum
- 82 LFS263 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 15 LFS264 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 11 LFS266 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 24 LFS267 Class Forum
- 22 LFS268 Class Forum
- 30 LFS269 Class Forum
- LFS270 Class Forum
- 202 LFS272 Class Forum
- 2 LFS272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 1 LFS274 Class Forum
- 4 LFS281 Class Forum
- 9 LFW111 Class Forum
- 259 LFW211 Class Forum
- 181 LFW212 Class Forum
- 13 SKF100 Class Forum
- 1 SKF200 Class Forum
- 1 SKF201 Class Forum
- 795 Hardware
- 199 Drivers
- 68 I/O Devices
- 37 Monitors
- 102 Multimedia
- 174 Networking
- 91 Printers & Scanners
- 85 Storage
- 758 Linux Distributions
- 82 Debian
- 67 Fedora
- 17 Linux Mint
- 13 Mageia
- 23 openSUSE
- 148 Red Hat Enterprise
- 31 Slackware
- 13 SUSE Enterprise
- 353 Ubuntu
- 468 Linux System Administration
- 39 Cloud Computing
- 71 Command Line/Scripting
- Github systems admin projects
- 93 Linux Security
- 78 Network Management
- 102 System Management
- 47 Web Management
- 63 Mobile Computing
- 18 Android
- 33 Development
- 1.2K New to Linux
- 1K Getting Started with Linux
- 370 Off Topic
- 114 Introductions
- 173 Small Talk
- 22 Study Material
- 805 Programming and Development
- 303 Kernel Development
- 484 Software Development
- 1.8K Software
- 261 Applications
- 183 Command Line
- 3 Compiling/Installing
- 987 Games
- 317 Installation
- 96 All In Program
- 96 All In Forum
Upcoming Training
-
August 20, 2018
Kubernetes Administration (LFS458)
-
August 20, 2018
Linux System Administration (LFS301)
-
August 27, 2018
Open Source Virtualization (LFS462)
-
August 27, 2018
Linux Kernel Debugging and Security (LFD440)