[Gllug] Using external USB drive/stick for OS

[Christopher Currie]

On Monday 03 November 2008 12:00:01  lesleyb at herlug.org.uk  wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 12:28:41AM +0000, Alistair Mann wrote:
> > lesleyb at herlug.org.uk wrote:
> > > So I am thinking of an external USB stick/drive I can connect up to my
> > > laptop and then install distros of my choice on.  The choice of
> > > drive/stick will be governed by cost and capacity.
> > >
> > > Anyone got any advice on this or experience of what will and won't
> > > work?  

> >
> > Chris mentioned making sure the host can boot from USB too, which is
> > sensible, as is making sure the distro can install to USB. Personally
> > I've preferred to install smaller distros rather than 'normal' ones,
> > such as enumerated at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LiveDistros
>
> I have USB listed on the boot options as well as the usual suspects plus
> NICs.
> A stick would appear to be more portable than an external HDD but less
> cpaacity but a HDD will have more space with less potability.

You can't actually drink either of them.

I haven't given attention to this problem for a long time (more than a year), 
because the 8GB sticks (the smallest ones then suitable for installing a 
full-blown distro with lots of apps & bells & whistles on) were expensive and 
slow (sometimes booting failed as a result. There are workarounds, but  this 
is something to watch). 

As a result, I've forgotten the technicalities, but at present I seem to have 
bootable sticks with: 
Austrumi 1.5.1 - this would fit on a 256 MB drive but  it's  on a 2 GB one
Slax (some old version)
Puppy 2.1.4 
MSDOS 6 and Windows 95 (doesn't boot properly, but gets to DOS, which is what 
I wanted)
PC-BSD (probably 1.4) - on an 8GB stick
and most interesting of all is a 4 GB stick with a GRUB partition and separate 
partitions with installed versions of Kubuntu, Pc-Linux OS, and Mepis 6.x 
which can also be booted from a GRUB CD with a redirect and a bit of fiddling 
(testing the geometry if necessary). However, as I recall, two of them 
stopped working at some point.

If you are using the stick with the same laptop all the time, as long as the 
laptop is capable of booting from USB, there's not much of a problem - you 
need to make sure that the boot sequence will search the USB ports and that 
the BIOS and the OS on the stick both regard the stick as the *same hard 
drive every time*.

If you want the stick to be a genuinely portable OS, then there's much more of 
a problem, since some laptops won't boot from the USB, and others change 
drive assignations arbitrarily. I solved this with the Grub CD idea, but even 
that doesn't work on all PCs.

Maybe someone has solved this problem in the year or so since I looked at it, 
but if so it's news to me.

Christopher

-- 
Christopher Currie
ccurrie at usa.net

Murphy is the Prince of this World

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug