installing second o.s. on external hard drive

[Gary Kirkpatrick]

On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 5:14 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8 February 2014 16:56, Gary Kirkpatrick <garyartista at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've got a laptop on which I am using an external hard drive with 13.10
> on
> > it.  Any reason I can not install another operating system on that hard
> > drive, or write over the one that is there?  I thought I'd check out
> ubuntu
> > 14.04.  Seems to work just fine from the usb.
>
>
> Should work.
>
> Beware, though:
>
> If you install Linux to your external drive, the copy of GRUB
> installed in your internal drive's bootsector will point to config
> files on the external drive. This means that without that external
> drive connected, you won't be able to boot. That can be a serious
> problem.
>
> Also, on some PCs, it might be tied to the particular USB port that
> you were using.
>
> How to get round this:
>
> * install OS on external drive
> * use new GRUB to boot OS on internal drive
> * reinstall the GRUB of the OS on your internal drive.
>
> If you do this, you will of course end up with entries for the
> removable drive that won't work if it's not connected. Indeed if it's
> not connected and you update Linux on the internal drive, the entries
> for the external drive's copy will be removed.
>
> Alternative: carefully tell the copy on the external drive to install
> GRUB into the bootsector of the external drive. Then, use your
> firmware boot menu to pick which to load, rather than GRUB.
>
>
>
> --
> Liam Proven * Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk * GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
> MSN: lproven at hotmail.com * Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
> Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 * Cell: +44 7939-087884
>


Oops!  Sorry, I neglected to mention that I have no internal hard drive.
It cratered and instead of putting new money into somewhat damaged computer
I decided to just use the external, which has 13.10 on one petition,
storage on another.  So i take it there would be no issue then?

garyk
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