General :: Installing Ubuntu 10.10 To An External HDD?
Feb 13, 2011
I installed Ubuntu 10.10 to an external HDD. The install went off without any problems or errors and the external HDD boots no problem on many different computers. Ubuntu runs great except for one problem. After I put the computer into sleep/standby mode it doesn't come out of standby mode properly. On some machines I get a black screen and a cursor on others I get some error messages. I then have to force a shut down and reboot. There is no problem going into standby or doing a regular shut down.
I work at a local computer shop as a computer technician and we get many computer in daily that require external virus scans (having to take out the hard drives, sticking it in another machine) just to scan (if we're lucky we can sometimes just do it in safe mode).Now what I want to know is...
1. Is it possible to install Ubuntu to an external HDD and use it virtually anywhere I plug it in? Will it pick up the network card, graphics card, etc so I can just plug and go? (Of course there are drivers for some computers).
2. Is it possible to run a Windows oriented virus scanner on Ubuntu? I know I can use WINE to run Windows applications, but will it prove to be compliant with virus scanners as well?
3. The main reason why I want it to be able to pick up on hardware and just work is because I plan on using it for schooling / travelling as well, have all my documents etc saved on it for easy access.
I've used Ubuntu in the past on an old laptop that didn't have much memory, small HDD, and a crap processor but that was 5-6 years ago (I still have the disk they sent me for free ).
Same as before except now not even the speaker control in the application barBackground:I have Ubuntu 9.10. Headphones appear to work fine. External speakers - nothing. There are so many sound preferences I have no idea what or which combination.Went to terminal and ran alsamixer which seems to recognize my sound card, though the driver is not listed in System > Administration > Hardware Drivers; the only driver listed is my graphics card.Setup: I have a Dell 8250. Speakers are plugged into the SB live card. Woofer and 2 speakers using transformer.
I am keen to start using Ubuntu and have installed it on one of 4 partitions on my new 1 TB external HD. I got to the reboot stage where I was expecting a new boot screen where I could decide to use either XP or Ubuntu. But there is no mention of Ubuntu just XP and the volume I installed Ubuntu on has disappeared. I can find the other 3 volumes on My Computer.
I have a DWA-130C (external wireless) and am trying to install the drivers for us in Linux Mint, I'm assuming this is done with ndiswrapper, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I am a begginer to Linux though I know the basics of using the console, packages and such.
I've got Vista installed on my notebook and I've bought an external drive (1,5 TB, but its size shouldn't matter in this case) and after formatting it I left 10 gigs for future purpose. Now, I decided to install 64bit debian on the unallocated 10 gigs. And so I did. To be precise: I have SATA drive inside my lap and hard drive (it's also SATA inside the cover) connected to my lap through USB. Boot sequence was 1)CD/DVD 2)hard drive 3)removable drive. During the installation the installer detected my internal drive as /dev/sda and my external drive as /dev/sdb. I decided to install grub on /dev/sdb (it was logical to me, since I didn't want to mess up my regular drive's MBR). Installer created 5 partitions on my USB drive. After booting from my external drive (look below*) I've got a message saying
Code:
error: no such partition Entering rescue mode... and after that I was in grub rescue console. When I typed ls I've got an output
error: unknown filesystem This occured for all the listed devices... On my internal drive there were (during the installation and running the live cd) 3 partitions detected (vista os, data, rescue disk) so I don't understand the output that ls in rescue console gave me. about booting from external drive: I did that after pressing ESC - I've got a prompt to choose which device I want to boot from - this wasn't working properly; after changing the boot sequence the grub started but with the abovementioned error message...
If there's any info about exact names/types/devices of my installed partitions needed I will run live CD and check it. If any other info is required I will provide it (I tried to describe the problem in the most precise way ) What I was thinking about: maybe there is a problem with ordering of the devices - when I boot from DVD my removable disk is treated as the "second one" and after booting from the removable disk it becames the "first one" or something like that? If any of you have any good info on how mapping of the device names works it would be appreciated, since I couldn't find anything useful or I just don't know what to ask google about.
1) How to install Debian on a removable disk (I had no problems with installing Linux on pendrive but I did that from VirtualBox and it was some time ago) OR how to install GRUB on a removable disk? (unfortunately, I cannot install 64bit system through VirtualBox)
2) What's the logic behind naming devices under /dev? How come the devices in grub have their names mapped as hdx etc and I've read that hdx are the names for IDE/ATA drives and sdx is the proper name for a SATA or USB device
I have an HP Pavilion dv9000 which I would like to use completely with any Linux OS. I have tried to install Linux Ubuntu 10.04.1 but it appears that it doesn't recognize the external monitor and ends the installation. I have a clean hard drive that I could install but I do not know which of the two drives I should replace. I can only get into windows in safe mode and I would think this may have something to do with the problem, don't no.
After installing ubuntu 9.10 on external HDD I cannot boot vista if external usb is unplugged(where ubuntu is installed). it says grub loading and after that recover grub ( i think that is what is says ... not certain in this moment ) anyway hope you get my dilemma. If you need more information I'll be glad to provide it.
I just bought WD External Hard drive for my laptop and found out that there is no support for Linux. I am running Ubuntu 9.10 and need advice on installation.
I am trying to install 10.04 to an external HD (not flash). I ran the live CD, installed to it and all seemed to work fine, but I don't want to use GRUB. I ran 7 repair and did a bootrec /fixmbr and it's booting normal, but I can't boot to USB.I want it to boot normal, unless I hit F12 to boot to removable device. Not much of a Linux person, but I am trying to be.
Is there a way to install 11.04 on a external USB drive. I tried the regular install but it will not let me pick the drive, it wants to install on my internal HD. I know I can use Startup disk Creator but It set it up like a install USB and it takes forever to boot up. Also if I use Unetbootin I won't be able to save files to the USB Drive.
I have 4 servers with RedHat Enterprise server 32-bit installed. i'm trying to install 64-bit system instead but the hardware has only CD drive (not DVD). When i tried to use external DVD drive and connect it to the USB to install the 64-bit system, it starts ok but then it ask for the media and give me 4 options (Internal CDROM, Internal Harddrive, FTP, NFS). Now i'm stuck with the DVD that system can't read it and i don't have RedHat on CDs and i'm unable to install the 64-bit system.
I looked around on these forums and google and came to no solution so, I decided to make this thread. I'm using Windows XP and after I downloaded and tested out Ubuntu 9.10, I decided I'd like it as a second OS, can I install Ubuntu on my external hard drive (1TB)? would installing on an external hard drive take away the risks of losing data etc? If I installed Ubuntu on my external hard drive would it delete any files already on my hard drive?
I tried to do this and something went wrong, and caused so much trouble that I decided I didn't want to do it at all. Then I changed my mind today, and decided I'll try again even after all that happened.
I have a iBook G3 that dosnt want to boot up at all. It makes the ding then a grey screen pops up. How do I install Ubuntu onto my iBook G3 with a external USB harddrive? is there a way?
I have not seen a clear cut or concise way to do this. I have copied my Linux system (Debian Lenny) from my internal hdd(hda) to a 160 GB external hdd(sda) hooked up through USB. I want to be able to boot from this external hdd. The system BIOS will allow ... supposedly ... booting from a USB device. I am using LILO with the internal and would rather continue using it. I don't know if it is installed correctly on the external. I seem to doubt it.Can anybody tell me where to look for more info? Or perhaps enlighten me on how to install LILO into the MBR of an external USB hdd.
Any other tips would be great as to how to boot my Linux system off of the external
The default (graphical) installer did not work on my PC (i7 quadcore 8 GB DDR3). I have installed Ubuntu using the alternative installer (Desktop, 64 bit) on my external USB drive. I installed grub on the MBR of the second drive (/dev/sdb) as I did not want to touch my (first) Windows disk. After reboot (chosing the USB drive as boot device, else Windows is booted) grub reports an error and enters the rescue mode. I tried all possible combinations of "root=(hdX,Y)" in grub.cfg to no avail.
I repeated the whole procedure but now disconnected the internal HD with Windows. Installation went smooth again (Windows disk was not seen this time), but after reboot (the internal drive connected or not) I again get (slightly different this time) grub error: can not find file.
I have a laptop with a busted screen and no way to boot directly to the external monitor with ubuntu installed and the thing is I want to install windows 7. Anybody know of anyway to do this without being able to see the screen before the os loads? So far I have messed around with installing windows 7 in vm box and trying to turn the vdi file into a valid partition and also tried installing it with wine but it couldn't find the temp folder to copy the install files.
I am having trouble with setting up the grub based system on my external hdd. I am trying to have one grub which is going to load operating systems, and livecd if any (usb install). I am stuck at installing Ubuntu 10.10 Minimal version (i don't need gui for linux).Here is what I have done so far:
1. Created 2 primary partitions - windows 7 recovery and data (ntfs) 2. Created an extended partition for linux stuff. 3. Create a logic partition (10MB) for grub (ext2)
I tried doing a search and couldn't find anything relatively recent on the topic so here is my question.
I am fairly new to the linux world and am in the process of trying out a couple different distributions. I am doing this by installing them to an external hard drive. This allows me to test them out without affecting my main system in any way. I have already tried openSUSE and it installed with no problems. I am trying to install Ubuntu, however when the installation tries to install GRUB2 it fails asking me for a different location to install it to.
When installing I unhook all drives from the computer except for the dvd drive, usb drive I'm installing from, and the external hard drive I am trying to install Ubuntu to. I'm not sure what else may be of use.
I have an external hard drive with an xfs partition on it. It was using an external journal, but in re-installing Slackware I removed the partition holding the external journal, forgetting what it was at the time. I didn't touch the contents of the external hard drive, but now I can't mount it and the various xfs programs seem to demand that it be mounted in order for them to change anything.Anyone have any ideas on how to change an xfs partition from external log to internal? Failing that, how do I get the information off it?
I plugged in my external dvd-r (asus) via usb. It showed me some message on shell, that it has detected the cdrom(although its dvd rom as well but nevermind) and its of ASUS. But how do i know which dev it was associated with in /dev/? Since i had to test something, i plugged it out, and save the output of ls /dev/ > ~/result.txt
after plugging the dvd-rom, i compared the results and was able to find that it was associated with simple cdrom i.e. /dev/cdrom. I wanted to know that is there any command that will tell me which /dev/ file was associated with external dvdrom? i tried to see in the following result
1) df -h ( no results, just the already mounted partitions) 2) fdisk -l ( same as above) 3) dmesg | tail (shown almost the same result as was shown on shell at the time of plugging the dvd)
I have issues in installing HP Ultrium 448 external tape drive on HP ML 370 G5 server running Red-Hat-Linx OS. It has a SCSI interface & I thought it was suppose to plug & play but not. I got an information that all i need to do is echo "engage scsi" > /proc/drivers/cciss/cciss1 but unfornately i do not know how to do this because i just began learning about LINUX,
Months ago one of my computers died. I have bought a brand new one laptop, but I have a problem at the moment I wanted to install Ubuntu in dual boot with Windows 7: the new partition that windows 7 reserves for securing system files.
There are three partitions: Windows 7 principal, Windows 7 for securing system files (at the drive's beginning) and the recovery partition that HP puts there. Then I only have option to resize the Windows principal partition and get another principal partition. My question is if you know how to deal with this?
The other option you can help me is to advise me about some external hard drives to install ubuntu in them and don't touch the internal disk of my laptop.
i currently have lucid installed on my laptop hard drive. i took this drive out and then on a new drive in its place i have installed windows 7. reason why i couldn't put windows 7 on the same drive is that i have a BIOS based system and the hard drive is GPT based not MBR. therefore, i couldn't get windows back on it.
I figured that using an esata expresscard interface i should be able to use the Windows 7 drive externally without much speed penalty since ExpressCard in my case is implemented on PCI Express and not USB.
So i can update grub using Code: update-grub
and Windows 7 appears on the list. However, when i select this option during boot, it gives me errors that indicates that the external drive cannot be found (not surprising)
My guess is that when GRUB appears, the external hard drive has not been detected yet, and the modules for the expresscard may only be loaded during the boot process of lucid.
So I am wondering if there is anyway I can get this to work. meaning use lucid on my main drive and boot to Windows 7 from the external drive time to time.
In the past I have been able to succesfully install ubuntu on several external usb drives with up to 500gb in size.Now I am trying to install a copy of ubuntu 10.10 on an external usb iomega 1tb eGo drive but I am having major issues.The installer reports the total disk size as only 124 gb, instead of the 998gb that gParted reports for the same disk. Proceeding with "use the full disk" installs ok, but it doesn't boot.Grub2 reports that it cannot find the kernel.After some desperate attempts to repartition and after some googling I think that the issue may be with the sector size, which fdisk -l reports as 4096kb (all my other drivers report 512kb) and I have the impression that linux is not ready for it (or I lack the knowledge, which seems more likely).I have also tried to install fedora 14. This distribution reports the correct disk size, installs properly, but again, it cannot boot (Fedora uses grub, not grub2), with a very similar message to the grub2 installer.Because of the way I work, I need my external usb drive to be able to boot linux. And I find it difficult to believe that linux doesn't handle 4096kb sector disks, so here I am asking for help . Please note I am not a linux expert.
I'm having the same problem this guy had. He got an error message when trying to install LinDVD, but since he realized he didn't actually need the software in the first place, the thread is still unsolved.
My computer has no CD/DVD drive. I just got a Toshiba External SuperMulti Drive that I want to use for reading CDs and DVDs. The drive included a CD with LinDVD on it, which I can put into the drive and use to install LinDVD. However, the Package Installer gives me the same status message as CKMBDavis had: Error: Wrong architecture 'lpia'.
I tried just hooking up the drive to my computer and inserting a DVD. It prompted me to open Movie Player, which I did, but when it tried to actually play the DVD, a pop up box came up that said, "An error occurred. Could not read from resource." VLC will not play the DVD either.
Here is my output for print architecture in response to adam814's first comment on CKMBDavis's thread:
Code: $ dpkg --print-architecture i386 I also tried adam814's suggestion in his second comment: Code: $ dpkg --force-architecture -i <lindvd.deb> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'
