Install Ubuntu 11.04 on External Hard Disk

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Install Ubuntu 11.04 on external hard disk

in Tutorials/Tips, ubuntu / on May 23, 2011 at 1:43 am /

Installing Ubuntu 11.04 or any other distribution on an externalhard drive connected to a computer via USB is about the same asthe method used to install it on an internal hard disk. Your choiceof external disk to use are many, but the one I used for this

tutorial is a 2.5

hard disk that I put in a similarly-sized hard diskenclosure.

A 320 GB 2.5 hard disk purchased for this tutorial cost US $45.Enclosures tend to be very cheap. The one I bought cost aboutUS $7. At 5x2.75, the whole unit can fit comfortably in anypocket. You can use it to clone your Ubuntu 11.04 installationthat you carry along with you. And with the USB connection,you can use it on any computer that can boot off a USB device.

To start, connect the disk via the USB cable to any computer and boot the computer using an Ubuntu 11.04 CDor DVD. At the disk partitioning step, select Something else. Doing that and clicking on Forwardwill take youto the installers advanced partitioning tool, which you are going to use to configure the partitions for Ubuntu11.04.

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If the computer you are using has only one hard disk, the external drive you are attempting to use will bedetected as /dev/sdb. The b shows that it is the second disk detected by the system. The task now is to selectthe disk and configure the partitions for Ubuntu.

Note: If you are intend to use this installation for serious stuff, it is better that you encrypt the disk. That

entails using an Alternate Installer ISO image. You may use how to install Ubuntu 11.04 on an encrypted

LVM file system as a guide, if you decide to follow that route.

You might also be interested in how to install Ubuntu 11.10 on external hard drive, with an NTFS partition

at the end.

By default, Ubuntus installer configures two partitions the first for /, the root directory, and the second forSwap. When creating partitions for installing any desktop Linux distribution, my recommendation is to create thefollowing four partitions:

/boot, the boot partition. This is where programs critical for booting the system will reside./, the root directory. The bulk of the programs used for running the system will be installed here.Swap, unformatted disk space for use as virtual memory./home, the partition where your home directory will be located. In the course of using the system, files andfolders you create will reside in various folders here.

To begin configuration, select the free space as shown, and click onAdd.


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The first partition will be for /boot. When setting up an LVM-based system using an Alternate Installer ISOimage, the default disk space allocated to /boot is 258 MB. However, only about 22 MB of that is used, soanything thing between that size range will do. For this tutorial, the default will be used. The mount point will, ofcourse, be /boot. The default file system is ext2. OK.


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The second partition will be for Swap, disk space that the computer may use as virtual memory. The suggestedsize for Swap is 2000 MB. Select swap area from the Use as dropdown menu. OK.

The third partition will be for /, the root directory. The default journaling file system on Ubuntu 11.04 is ext4.You may stick with it or choose another journaling file system available. The installer recommends a minimum of4.4 GB for Ubuntu 11.04, but on a new installation, less than 3 GB of disk space allocated to / is used. Note thatas you install additional application after installation, disk space used will grow, so be generous here. I think 10GB should be more than enough. OK.

The last partition will be for /home. The file system is ext4, and you may allocate all available disk space to it.

OK.


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All the partitions have been configured. Before clickingInstall Now, you need to change where GRUB, the bootloader, will be installed. By default, it will be installed in the MBR of the computers internal disk. But that is not

what you want. You want to install GRUB in the MBR of the external disk. So, under the Device for bootloader installation section, click on the dropdown menu, and select the entry that matches the external disk thatyou just partitioned. Once that is done, continue with the rest of the installation.

After installation, test the system by booting the computer from the disk. You may use this as a mobile clone ofyour Ubuntu 11.04 installation.

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Hi, i followed the installation as stated and a message pop-up at the end of the installation said it wassuccessful. But I got a Error: couldnt read file. Press any key to continue before login into Ubuntu.Do you have any idea why ?

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Hasse Johansen: I think Newsblur can also be selfhosted (but it require some

finid: What's the size of the HDD, and how far is /boot from the fi

Rahul: Hello, I tried your tutorial word by word. However every

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Install Ubuntu 11.04 on External Hard Disk