Hello fellow users would appreciate some help on this. I have a 250 gig usb hard drive. I would like to install Mandriva and Open Suse 11.3 on it, is this possible and how do I get the systems loaded. I got Mandriva installed, but whne I tried Open Suse it trashed my Mandriva, i.e. I could'nt boot into it. Any help would be gratefully received. Nothing too technical if possible and if I have posted in the wrong place accept my apologies. Thank you.

More detail...

How did openSUSE trash your Mandriva? Did SUSE partition the HDD where Mandriva was and install over it or is the problem with the bootloader?

If you can boot either, open a terminal and as "su" run the command "fdisk -l" to look at your partition table and post it. Otherwise, you can use a live-cd.

I always keep a copy of PartedMagic at hand for cases like this.

If the problem is booting, you might use the live-cd of the last linux installed to fix the bootloader and chainload the other linux.

You can also use a copy of the SuperGrubDisk to repair GRUB. There is useful information in the wiki.

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/Main_Page

Normally I'd suggest that you put grub on the usb drive. That is not normally a great idea if you move the drive around.

Did you install grub to the usb drive or a local drive?

In either case I think it is one of two issues. One may be that grub needs to be configured. Second is that somehow in the install you (or the installer) did in fact mess up the install. Opensuse ought to be able to view the partitions and even mount areas to see what happened.