Install to external USB drive

[Jim Cornette]

Allen Benusa wrote:

>Here is my configuration:
>IBM R40 laptop
>External USB2 40GB 2.5" drive.
>
>The laptop BIOS has USB boot support.  I have tested this by putting DOS on the USB drive and booting from it.  I have used this drive quite a bit with WinXP and it has worked flawlessly.
>
>I have removed the internal drive on the laptop temporarily because I don't want to chance messing it up.  My goal is to install Linux to the external USB drive and being able to run Linux just by plugging in the USB drive and booting from it.
>
>When running the Fedora Core 1 installer, the external USB drive is recognized.  I have tested this by putting a 4GB partition on it with the ISO images.  The remaining 36GB I just made as an empty partition.  The installer sees /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2.  The installer can find the images on sda1.  However once the installer gets to the point of partitioning, the external USB drive is not seen.  I don't understand why at the beginning of the install the USB drive is seen, and a bit later, the drive is not seen.
>
>Any ideas on how to install to the USB drive?
>
>- Allen -
>  
>
I've tried to install Linux, win 98 and win 2 onto a bootable USB drive, 
it has failed each time. I believe that I sucessfully made a bootable 
DOS partition with the drive also.

I did try to boot an installation from a drive that was originally in a 
laptop that I used to own. The kernel could not find the boot partition. 
This was on a 2.5 laptop drive within an IDE to USB converter enclosure.

I read a few discussons related to using labels to mount drives, then 
when the drive is changed from one location to the other, it is still 
recgnized by grub.

I'm not sure if you can get it to work the way that you want it to. I 
gave up and backed up the stuff I wanted and reformatted the drive for 
other portability uses.

Also, I think that the problem is due to the order in which the USB is 
loaded and when your BIOS gives over control to Linux commands.

You might not catch on to what I'm trying to say. But I have tried 
something similar before.

BIOS allows you to boot, kernel starts to load, panics when it cannot 
find the */* directory.

Jim