I want to Install 12.1 on an external drive. In the past I have physically disconnected the Boot HD. Unfortunately this has become more difficult with the case placed in a less accessible location. I have experienced all kinds of horrible side effects with unwanted changes to my comfortable windows partition. So can it be done without disconnecting the drive with windows on it. I do not want some other partition to become active and leave me chasing soöutions. Neither do I want to spend half an hour on the floor disconnecting and reconnecting just to get in the case…
We’ll need a bit more info about this. I’m sure it can be done, but I don’t know your specs. How big us the external drive. I assume it’s connected via USB, right? what does fdisk -l show? Can your computer boot from USB?
I can boot from USB and the drive is big enough. I want to use the boot drive choice from the motherboard. What I really wanted to know is about a settings in the installation process where you can pick boot manager locations etc. Somewhere in there are the choices that would enable be to leave my existing boot drive in its pure pristine “ungrubbed” form with no change to the active partition… That is what I want.
Thanks Alan
I think you misunderstand the bootload. You will need GRUB or LILO. It can be written to the MBR, or to the root partition. The NTbootloader will not work for this. You are still not providing the info asked for.
On Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:16:03 +0000, chrazer wrote:
> I want to Install 12.1 on an external drive. In the past I have
> physically disconnected the Boot HD. Unfortunately this has become more
> difficult with the case placed in a less accessible location. I have
> experienced all kinds of horrible side effects with unwanted changes to
> my comfortable windows partition. So can it be done without
> disconnecting the drive with windows on it. I do not want some other
> partition to become active and leave me chasing soöutions. Neither do I
> want to spend half an hour on the floor disconnecting and reconnecting
> just to get in the case…
Just a thought, but you might try using isohybrid to prep one of the
LiveCD images for USB booting, and then write that image to your USB
drive (assuming it’s blank).
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Perhaps I am lacking in Clarity of speech. I will need Grub it is true, but I want it on the external drive. I do not want the opensuse Installer to change “anything” on my running boot drive. My normal procedure was
- Disconnect Boot drive
2 . Boot from Dvd install on external.
3 . Reconnect windows boot drive. - The mainboards boot selector can the be used to choose.
Now I am too old to crawl around on floor willingly… I wanted just to ensure that the opensuse install process allows me to control every aspect of its actions…
You can easily have GRUB install to the external drive. Simply select the option to install to root.
Dont’t think he has to install grub to the root partition on his external drive
I believe in the install process one can enter the grub options and choose the drive who’s mbr you wish to install grub to by choosing something like /dev/sdc from the drop-down list but then leaving options such as ‘install to root partition’ unticked (your drive may not be located at /dev/sdc so exercise caution and make sure you know exactly where the usb drive is located)
Personally though if I were trying this I would also check the bios boot order and hard drive priority before starting the installation and perhaps even disable the windows drive altogether in bios
Boot order something like:
Dvd
Usb drive you wish to install opensuse 12.1 to
Internal drive with windows installed
Hard drive priority, set the usb drive as drive 1 (if possible) & the internal windows drive as drive 2
If you can’t apply these settings, or just feel that using them and the option of selecting which drive’s mbr to install grub to isn’t enough of a guarantee for ya, then consider disabling the windows drive altogether in bios
In the Yast - bootloader config, go into the details areas, and simply remove the entry for the internal disk. Then check all references to it and remove them, set the installer to put them on the external disk. All this assuming you want to boot the external disk using the BIOS feature, leaving the Win disk entirely untouched.