I have an external USB drive /dev/sdb with plenty of room on a first partition for a linux distro.
The problem im having is that every distro i have tried so far doesnt seem to have an installer capable of handling this.
I tried debian and kali (debian based) and both refuse to see the USB drive.
I tried arch and it saw /dev/sda as /dev/sdb and /dev/sdb as /dev/sda, so if i got it installed i would have to boot from a dvd or something to fix the fstab even if i got it installed in that condition.
The slackware installer has no problem at all identifying both drives correctly so i know this isnt some sort of technical limitation.
So does anyone know of a linux distro that can see a usb hard drive /dev/sdb other than slackware(which im using currently)?

Thanks

Yes. I wrote about it long ago also.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/...s-eee-900.html

The current version of AntiX should work just as good or better. Because the installer has been tweaked to not have the problem I posted in that tutorial. MX-14 and AntiX 15 use the same graphical installer so if wanting XFCE instead of a window manager. Install Mx-14 latest snapshot instead.

http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx

Both are based on Debian.

From reading the link im not sure its the same problem.
Anyway, i'm done trying to do this with a debian based distro, of the ones i have tried, some as recent as this month, they all have the problem and they all have the same installer.

i know for a FACT that Kali installs very very very easy on a usb drive
( use the "dd" method to place the ISO on it )

I installed kail to an FULL DRIVE ENCRYPTED disk with "persistence"
this is a normal type of install

and was almost as easy as installing Debian8

and Debian 8 installed EASIER than OpenSUSE and way easier than Arch

I dont want to use the dd method, i have gotten corrupted volumes doing that in the past and its a pain to fix, i would also like to be able to have access to the usual customizations that one has in an install from dvd/usb drive to a partition and to be able to boot that install as a partition rather than as a live usb stick session.
EDIT: Also booting a 150g hard drive partition as a usb stick just seems ridiculous to me

Easy is a secondary consideration.

I install to usb drives all the time. Debian will work.

Just remove the internal drive and be sure to boot to bios. Then look and see that the usb drive does show up as a hard drive.

i was actually hoping to do this without opening the case
Its a proprietary dell design and its a mess in there.

How so ?. You will be in a chroot - "fix" it at the time.
Although it's been a while since I had to re-install Arch, I'd be surprised if it used raw device nodes anyway.

Yeah i thought about just installing it anyway and using partition size to determine which drive was which and later chrooting in to fix lilo and fstab but my fear was that the format and partition utility in the installer would see it differently than the package installer.

When I am too busy (OK, too lazy) to open a box, I use a virtual machine. I boot the vm to the installer iso with no virtual hard drives attached. Then I attach the usb to the vm and finish the install to the usb. It doesn't affect the host.