Linux On An External Hard Drive Can i use the above with a windows system also?

[shadowx 0]

Hi all!! (rather happy got a new laptop so bear with my hyponess!)So I have my new laptop (advent 7096 incase anyone is wondering ) And my dad said he will buy my an external hard drive for my birthday (this saturday!) And i do like linux and before i had a dual boot system with a choice of windows and a linux distro, but this has only a 40gb hard drive and with about 8.5-9 used up by windows already i fear that using this with a boot selector and partitioned could cause me to run out of room so my solution is to have linux on the external hard drive and windows on the internal.But my question is this:what happens if i plug the usb external hard drive into my windows system while windows is running? Because i will almost certainly use the external HD to store my college work and other college items (definately not games! ) and they will be probably windows based as the college system is based on windows, sorry this seems a little confusing i think but what im saying is, is it possible to have linux nstalled on a partition on the external HD and store windows documents (eg word docs) on it and still be able to access them from a windows machine?I have a fear that when i plug the external HD in the windows system will try to find an autorun executable and then try to boot linux causin problems of having two operating systems fighting over one set of resources, so will the windows system do this or will it just show me the files and do nothing more?Also im fairly sure that to boot into linux on the external HD it would be simple as to plug it in before i turn the machine on and then set the option in the BIOs to boot rom the USB and therefore into linux, is this the case?I jus dont want to have a meltdown of windows fighting linux, though could be fun to watch if it wasnt on my machine !!Farewell!

[terminal2k 0]

I'm not sure about booting linux via the external drive but i can answer a few of your other questionsyes you can have a windows partition on the external hdd (fat32 would probly best for better compatability with linux so it can access this stuff too) and have seperate partitions for linux.no when you connect the drive while running windows it won't try to run linux, in most cases it won't even be able to "see" the linux partitionshope that helps a bit

[shadowx 0]

I'm not sure about booting linux via the external drive but i can answer a few of your other questions
yes you can have a windows partition on the external hdd (fat32 would probly best for better compatability with linux so it can access this stuff too) and have seperate partitions for linux.

no when you connect the drive while running windows it won't try to run linux, in most cases it won't even be able to "see" the linux partitions

hope that helps a bit

Yeh that helps alot, the main worry was windows trying to boot linux but if it cant even see linux then that wont be a problem so thats good news, I should imagine that the bot loader in linux will be able to bot linux from the external if i do what i said before or maybe there is a way to set one partition as the boot partition.

Thanks

[kdr_98 0]

Windows can't boot Linux , since both of them are Operating systems.You can only select an operating system at boot time, by the BIOS settings or a Bootmanager.You can have several parttions on your (external) hard drive.But if you can you should place the boot partittion in the begin.Since there may be problems when they get over ceratin limits.Booting from an external hard drive can , but have to supported by your bios.In some cases you can even boot from a memory stick.If all that doesn't work , you can always use a live distribution of linux (like Knoppix , ... ).They even exisist on DVD, they have a lot of software on it and only some settings will be save on your hard drive, I think that latest version there is even USB support for extranal harddrives and memory sticks.Support for NTFS is not completly there (most of the time reading works , but writing have some problems).

[shadowx 0]

Windows can't boot Linux , since both of them are Operating systems.You can only select an operating system at boot time, by the BIOS settings or a Bootmanager.

You can have several parttions on your (external) hard drive.
But if you can you should place the boot partittion in the begin.
Since there may be problems when they get over ceratin limits.

Booting from an external hard drive can , but have to supported by your bios.
In some cases you can even boot from a memory stick.
If all that doesn't work , you can always use a live distribution of linux (like Knoppix , ... ).
They even exisist on DVD, they have a lot of software on it and only some settings will be save on your hard drive, I think that latest version there is even USB support for extranal harddrives and memory sticks.

Support for NTFS is not completly there (most of the time reading works , but writing have some problems).

That sounds like pretty much what I want to happen really so its all good! I havent checked my bios settings yet mainly out of laziness but as its a new machine i figure the bios should supprt booting on the usb so it should work.

Thanx

[iGuest 3]

ubuntu 8.04lts, hdd problemLinux On An External Hard Drive

unable to mount volume. external sata hdd

I'm having problem with my hdd sata 160gb, I have there many documents, they work nicely on windows but connected to the pc wen the os is ubunto nothing, they say unable to mount the volume, help Please... To many docsss...

-reply by gabraiboy

 

[iGuest 3]

Jaunty boots with grub legacy on a MacLinux On An External Hard Drive

Managed to create an external Jaunty boot disk on a Mac, but unsure about the boot process involvedI have an iMac 7.1 with a Leo/Jaunty dual boot. I was able to clone my internal Jaunty install to a bootable external disk (with grub legacy, not grub2), but I'd be happy if somebody could explain the boot process to me - if there is an explanation intelligible to the layman (Please no references to the grub.Enbug.Org pages which are fairly hardcore and which I intend to take my time in pursuing. I also know the basic stuff about installing and repairing grub, which works exactly the same way as for Windows, so I need no absolute beginners' instructions.)The external boot process is somewhat confusing; when I boot the Mac with the alt key pressed and the disk plugged in (no rEFIt installed, nor needed), I get the normal EFI menu with my Mac volume and "Windows" (no orange usb icon), and the usual "booting from (hd0,2)" message, but the external volume will boot. (With no disk plugged in the internal volume boots normally.)This disk will also boot (with rEFIt) from my MacBook Pro which has no internal Linux (yet; waiting for Karmic). The boot message this time is "booting from (hd0,1)". I read somewhere that rEFIt shifts the device identifier, but then the output should be (hd0,1) in both cases.My grub setup for the internal install is (typed from the live CD):>root (hd0,2)>setup (hd0)For the external disk (typed from the desktop, booted into the internal volume):>root (hd1,1) #that is /dev/sdb2; did not delete the EFI partition, assuming that the #Mac's EFI will look for the MBR there>setup (hd1)So far, so logical. From the point of view of a relative newbie all this looks like a kind of workaround in EFI to trick the Mac into mistaking the external volume for an internal one. Well, it works, but it's not exactly elegant, and of course it would not allow multiple boot volumes on a single disk as on the Mac.Incidentally, the home partition on the external disk is hfs+ formatted, which works perfectly well (installed hfsprogs). The partition will appear on the Mac desktop, it can be renamed, and Linux will ignore .DS_Store, .Fseventsd and the rest.-reply by nokangaroo

[iGuest 3]

booting Linux of a external.. it worksLinux On An External Hard DriveReplying to shadowxOk. I tried it.I boght a external closure and took a 80GB out of a crapy compter.Than on my other crapy computer I erased the whole drive . But did not formated it yet.I put in the Mandriva Xtreme 3 linux disk into the DVD-Ram Drive. From my crappy computer. Than booted thae disk.When I got to the intall part to install that partions that it is going to use. I clicked coustom partion install and than thier was a chose of HDD to pick from 'sda' which is the from the crapy computer and a 'sdb' which is the 80gb external drive.I selected that and than choosed to have a 16gb root and a 3gb swap. It formated that 20gb of the drive to have the linux on.When the bootloader is ready to be installed you choose to install the bootloader onto the external drive.Than after installion you reboot.When it turns on . I push 'esc' to tell the computer that I want to boot from a deffeint device. Than I select the external drive. Than it boot up linux. :)Right now I'm try to have a boot up on a mac. So far no good. But I boot up on a diffent computer than the computer I had the boot disk in.So ya you can boot linux of a external.You can even boot up Win Xp of it too.HArd drive is the brain of the computer.Just tell the computer what brain to think from.-reply by ZophtX