I've Googled, looked, read and still I'm unsure how to go about making my external HDD act exactly like the internal. I have created multiboot USBs (Flash drives) with YUMI but YUMI doesn't seem to support persistence. I tried Universal USB Installer 1.9.5.2 but so far it doesn't seem to support multiboot (also flash drive). I have a 500GB external HDD and would really LOVE to have it multiboot a few Linux distros. IE: Debian, Arch, Kali, OpenSUSE, and maybe Fedora. I would also like it to have what is called "Persistence" to save my changes, of course. Would someone please tell me how to do this. I know how to config the bios to boot from USB before the internal HDD, no need to tell me about that . I hope Grub2 would be involved. Do I install Grub first? then have GParted, separately re-allocate the external for each new install? Am I even close to how its done? lol... Help please! I don't think Kali needs much extra HDD space at all. but the others I would like to allocate, saaayyy.. 80GB each, or something like that...

I hope this wasn't too wordy but I want to be clear about the goals I want to accomplish. I'm sure there MUST be some way these 'goals' have come together, I just cant seem to find how its done.

Thanks in advance for any all helpers out there -- The Linux community is full of awesome!

What you want to acheive is fairly simple. In essence you would partition the drive then install each distro as you would to an internal drive (you can disconnect your internal drive before starting the process to be safe). Then you update GRUB onthe last distro installed and it should pick up the other installs and add ghem to its menu.

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The persistence feature you refer to is generally used when installing a 'Live CD' to a flash drive. The Live CD is read-only so that is why the persistence feature is used, so that some changes and data can be saved. This is available in unetbootin and is also mentioned in the PendriveLinux page but seems to be limited as indicated by the 'if available' comment at the end of the first paragraph at the site below:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/univers...easy-as-1-2-3/

From the info you posted, I don't think this is what you want and you should just install the way you would to a regular drive as suggested by '273' above.

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Any reason you don't wish to do a normal install? What I mean is that almost every new distro and newish computer see's an external drive just as it were an internal drive. The tasks involved are simply to understand boot order and watch out to protect internal drive data in process. (hint, unplug power from it)

A full normal install would be much better on larger drives than persistence.

If you want to use persistence there get's into some issues where one persistence file might have to be moved or changed in order to run next distro. A normal install could all use same swap file or swap partition and be fully upgradable/updateable. (guess that isn't a real word)

Thanks all

I thought I might be making mountains out of mole hills. Maybe I'll disconnect the internal HDD to be safe and just install normally, though I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference between the 80GB internal and the 500GB external. Just gotta look into partitioning it. I figure it would probably be best to have the drive ready to go beforehand, yes? Rather than have each install redo the partitioning...

Better safe than sorry.

You may know the difference but it could be that some installer can't read.

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Roger that jefro, safer it is! Thanks for the added warning.

Let us know how it goes.

Be sure to notice boot order in bios and have it set to usb hard drive as first "hard drive" choice. Usually not usb order, hard drive order.