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Home / Win2Lin MIGRATION STORIES / discussion Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive

Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) banirban Hi, I am new to linux ---- I got an external USB hard drive on which I plan to install Suse 9.0 professional. I have Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop with Win XP which I would like to keep. My question is --- are there any problems/issues/pitfalls that I would need to be aware of? I am quite new to this so please forgive my ignorance. Dec 04, 2024 11:20:26

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) zipper I would not attempt to place SUSE 9 on an external USB harddrive. I would place it on a partition itself on the laptop. Just my opinion. Others might have an easy solution for you, but I doubt it. Dec 04, 2024 12:56:50

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) banirban Hi Zipper, is there any technical restriction/problem in that or for performance you are saying not to put Suse on external hard drive? Also is the problem only with Suse or with any other distros. And how does the NTFS partitioning work with Suse 9.0? Has anybody tried that? Thanks in advance, Anirban Dec 04, 2024 13:01:45

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) zipper banirban, My concern is that right now USB support is available in Linux, but only for some limited items. The new 2.6 kernel promises to have better and more complete USB support. If there is anyone out there that has put Linux on an external USB hard drive, maybe they could chime in to this thread, please. Another concern is that yourself being new to Linux, I would not want you to have an completely negative start by trying to place Linux on the USB drive. Watch this forum in the next 24 hours or so and maybe more information will come in. This is about the best forum I have found for quick help. "zipper" Dec 04, 2024 13:26:07

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) zipper baniban, According to SUSE website http://www.suse.de/us/private/products/suse_linux/preview/interview.html NTFS file systems are supported enabling a person to install SUSE 9 alongside windows XP. In this case scenario, with suse installed with XP on the main harddrive and the USB harddrive plugged in at the time of installation, SUSE should recognize the USB drive and be able to use it along with XP for extra storage and file retrieval. Dec 04, 2024 13:33:02

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) banirban Hi zipper, thanks for the info. I also read that Suse is now supporting NTFS partitioning --- but I don't know how good that is. Anyway I will backup all of my stuff and give this a shot. Will come back to this forum again when I actually start the installation and run into difficulties. Looks like lot of people had problems with Suse 9.0 so I am not having extremely high hopes. Regards Anirban Dec 04, 2024 14:33:31

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) zipper banirban, Thanks for your input, please do come back and post your experiences. All information is helpful. I have had no problems with SUSE 9 so far. "zipper" Dec 04, 2024 14:52:54

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) Wrath banirban, Even if there is no problem installing an OS on an external drive (meaning a USB driver would have to be loaded PRIOR to boot from HD), there is the problem that the USB is a very slow bottleneck. Most internal harddrives can "talk" to the processor at around 300 Mbps or more. USB, on the other hand, maxes out at 11Mbps. Thus, even if you could load Linux on your external drive it would bore you to tears while loading and/or doing anything. That would be very disappointing. Also, NTFS write support was experimental last I checked. I was very surprised to see that SuSE 9.0 supports it. Dec 04, 2024 21:24:22

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) banirban Hi Wrath, Zipper I know USB is going to be slow --- anyway I have decided to leave that option of running from external drive. I will run from internal drive --- probably from the swappable media bay that I have on my Inspiron 8200. I will get another hard drive and install it there. Maybe initially I will give the NTFS partitioning a shot to see if it works. Has anybody used Partition Magic and give me any feedback on that? Also between mandrake 9.1/9.2 and Suse 9.0 can anybody tell me which one is better/easier to install and has more hardware support. My I8200 spec is as follows : P4 1.6 G Mobile 20 GB IBM hard drive 32 Mb Nvidia Geforce 2 Go CDRW-DVD combo(Samsung) Floppy drive in media bay Actiontec V.92 modem Thanks in advance Dec 05, 2024 06:37:05

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) zipper Mandrake 9.1 & 9.2 gave me fits and did not fulfill my expectations. SUSE 9.0 has met all my requirements and then some. I use Partition magic 7.0 regularly on machines. Boot magic also works well when installing Linux distros along side of windows, just remember when installing Linux to install the bootloader,either Grub or Lilo to the root partition of the Linux system. If it is installs to the Master Boot Record it will disable boot magic and boot the system. Boot magic can be enabled again from the Windows system. Dec 05, 2024 07:25:13

RE:Suse 9.0 on external (USB) hard drive (modified 0 times) banirban Hi Zipper, thanks a lot for the info. That gives me some more confidence on Suse 9.0. I will most probably buy the Partition Magic 8.0. Will update here how it goes. Thanks again, Anirban Dec 05, 2024 13:57:14

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