Hello,

Objective:

To install Linux on a second usb-base hard-disk while keeping
the primary hard-disk intacted for XP.

Scenario:
I failed to make Redhat Fedora to detect a second hard-disk
installed on a laptop using USB connection. When I checked
on XP, the usb-based hard-disk is found on drive E:

I made some research and found out that Linux is not very
flexible comes to the usb based devices.

The BIOS configuration doesn't help me to specify which
hard-disk i like to install Linux on, the BIOS always defaulted
to C: drive


Question:
How can i resolve this issue? Thank.

There are few ideas i've come out with but not sure how to do
that

1) How can I make the dafault boot drive to E instead of C
to trick the BIOS to use this drive E as C?

the problem is the redhat, and all other os's, require drivers to work with usb. Here is the problem. Linux needs to be bootstraped from a hard drive that the computer can see before drivers. Hence if you were to plug a MS bootdisk in you could not see your other harddrive. Try clearing your E:, formating MSdos with fdisk and format. Then copy your cd images over to the clean E:. This may prove harder than you think. I am not sure how to copy cd images over from a cd in windoze. But you can download them from redhat. Then once the images are on the harddrive, boot into msdos. go to the dosutils folder of the download and run autoboot. Windoze drivers will stay with the machine untill it can see the usb device. But you will need to create a boot floppy, or install lilo/grub on the c:.

Thank for the info. I think I'll use open source partition software to resize
the NTFS system and hope it works
. Thks again