I want my Seagate 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive to be temporarily turned into a DVD-Rom so that I can install a Linux distribution .iso that is around 4gb.

This is what I did:
First I mounted the ISO
Then I explored the files on that ISO (i.e. F:\) and copied ALL of its contents
I pasted ALL of the files on the ISO to my XHDD (i.e. E:\)
After a few minutes of waiting for the file sto be copied, I restarted my computer and entered BIOS
I changed the Boot order so that HDD E:\ would start up first
Everything going fine, I saved and restarted
So it restarted and then I get an error saying "Cannot find NTLDR, please restart by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL"

So I guess i need the NTLDR, which I have found out to be the boot loader for Windows NT
All I need to do is to find NTLDR, put it on my XHDD and repeat my clever process, right? Or what am I missing? How is a CD so different from an XHDD anyway...

(You are probably wondering why I even need to do this... well the thing is I have no blank DVDs! And I don't really want to buy any)

Thx a bunch!

Intriguing concept.... Not sure I understand the issue 100%, but here's what I have to offer:

A CD or DVD uses either UDF or iso9660 for a filesystem. Typically, though not EVERY time, a CD is UDF, and DVD's are iso9660. If you are able to format the USB drive as iso9660, it **might** work.. But this seems an odd request..
So I guess, format the USB drive as iso9660, install the ISO image to it, and try to boot it...

Another idea would be to format the drive as a blank DVD (iso9660 again) and use Infrarecorder to 'burn' the ISO to the XHDD.. Again, sketchy at best, and just speculation..

I guess.. Hmm, definitely let us know what happens

I would rather not reformat my XHDD because I have about 100gb of stuff on it. If it is the only way, I could transfer my files to my PC, the hard drive of which is 275, but that would take all night :/

Could you use something like parted or partition magic to make another partition on it?
All around, I really don't think this will work to be honest, but, who knows until ya try, right?

Gee, thanks for the support! lol
I'm dling Partition Magic as i type

Edit: I don't think I can do much with it, because I downloaded the evaluation version. I really wish I could run it with NTFS..

Hmmm... Not totally certain, but I don't think Slack will like running off of NTFS. Or linux in general for that matter.

The situation is unique, I really hope it works, and like I said, never know without trying

At least a number of distributions do support installing from HD but there are certain requirements:
- the iso needs to be be extracted first (there is software that can do this)
- it needs to sit on a Linux partition, not NTFS
- the target partition has to contain a minimal set-up package in order for the install to take off