Mikkel responded: I have done it both ways - as a fresh install, and by taking a hard drive with an installed OS, and putting it in an external USB case, and the drive has always ended up as /dev/sda. This is much less of a problem if you are using LVM and/of partition labels then if you are mounting partitions directly. (As long as your LVM names do not collide! ie more then one VolGroup00.) By far, the easiest is to do a fresh, expert install to a USB drive - it will even do the proper Grub install so that you can boot off the USB drive directly on any system that supports booting from a USB drive. You can do this when moving an install to an external case, but it is much easier doing it at install time. Mikkel ----------- Mikkel, I am sure you know the best way, but consider: re LVM: I know nothing; re partition labels: I have some but limited experience; re fresh installs: very limited --my main fc5 was put on for me by a vendor in aug 06 --i did that kubuntu install (from a dvd? cant recall) late06,early 07 -- and some other knoppix-based things re fresh, expert install to usb/or scsi: I have no experience I got into this bc Iwas trying to prepare for installing f9,f10 on my scsi sda,sdb, and so backed up fc5 to my usb to make space on scsi. My usb is one large reiserfs partition ( set up by my vendor in 2006) (I am uncertain as to what tool to use to shrink that usb reiserfs partition without losing my backupdata, or even if that is possible. I would like more than one partition if I am going to get into doing installs to the usb) Then, it was only bc I was frustrated it seemed completely to boot off my fc5copy on usb ( could not find /dev/root...) that i tried the kubuntu 2.6.26-386 kernel,initrd and that worked! so then I got your advice re usb-storage etc,etc and i finally got it also working using the fc5 kernel,initrd. So, all my recent experience is with doing the copy not a fresh install so I will try that with a usb copy of the kubuntu install. If that succeeds, whatever the result sda or sdc, then i will look into doing fresh, expert install to usb of f9 or f10 thanks much for your detailed responses Jack