Themuffledvoice

Forgive me if this old hack but I'm basically trying to run ubuntu on my old laptop from an external hard drive.

Now, the old internal HDD is basically beyond (affordable) repair and my cd drive does not work....:). I am currently running ubuntu from a 4gb flash drive but cannot install it onto my external HDD because I have only 2 usb sockets and the HDD needs both (and I obviously need one for the flash drive).

Is it possible to make the HDD bootable ? (I used UNetbootin for the flash drive and assume you can also use it for the external HDD) Also if I can do that, can I then install ubuntu onto the same HDD? (by partitioning etc.)

It seems to me that it's the only way to make this frankenstein of a laptop work! Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Done_Fishin

I couldn't get UNetbootin to work on the one occasion that I had tried but have used CD2USB successfully, this gives you the advantage that you don't lose any updates or changes made when you close your current session.

I think that there is also an "install to USB" option once you have booted the CD ROM .. but that doesn't really help you, But I may be thinking of "Super Ubuntu" or Karmic .

(Edit : Ubuntu has a program that does it. System-->Administration-->USB Startup Disk Creator)

What you may need is an external power source for your existing drive, something that used to be given along with USB - IDE adapters which will free up that extra port. I tend to use adapters rather than cases for my external drives .. but that is all in a days work for me .

I have successfully installed Ubuntu to external 20 GB laptop drives as well as normal 3.5" drives (using adapters and power supplies as stated above), the main question is whether you have a "boot from USB" option in BIOS, which is more than likely judging from your post above!