external installation question

[Paul Merrell]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 5:46 AM,  <aerospace1028 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> If I understand correctly--once I get everything loaded on the external
> drive and the boot order fixed--with the drive attached to my computer, I
> will have the option to boot into archlinux, and with the drive
> disconnected--while the machine is powered off--booting the machine will
> revert to automatically jumping into the factory-installed Windows-7.  The
> net effect should be similar to when I boot the live-CD: without the cd in
> the tray (or this case the external drive plugged into the computer), my
> computer will have no clue there are any other operating systems in
> existance and just go happily on its way?  or as happily as my machine gets?

Not sure about archlinux's auto-recognition of USB devices. It works
that way on other recent distros I use or have used.

The big difference between a USB drive and a CD drive, from a user
standpoint, is that you *must* dismount the USB drive before you
disconnect it from the machine unless the machine is turned off. Some
distros call this "ejecting" the drive, although it does not
physically eject the drive.

With a USB 3 hard drive, you may wish to disconnect it when not in use
to save wear and tear from spinning. If you do, be sure to dismount it
before disconnecting *every* time. Disconnecting a USB thumb or hard
drive without dismounting it first will almost always cause grief on
Linux, sometimes resulting in an unusable drive. Much more commonly,
you'll hit difficulties in mounting it. There is probably a way to fix
such problems on Linux. But because I also have a Windows 7 system, I
have fixed most such problems by plugging the drive into the Windows
machine. In most cases, Windows will fix the problem without any extra
effort on my part. Then back to the Linux machine.

But I'm looking for a more trustworthy backup solution than an
external USB 3 drive. Too many problems, with three different
brands/models so far.

Best regards,

Paul



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