Have installed few distros on USB hadd and flash drive.
(NOT liveCD and liveUSB).
IDEA was produce MOBILE-PC on 8GB flash drive and give friends and relatives as INTERESTING gift.
Started dual boot on a SAMSUNG hdd.
Installed UBUNTU10 and opensuse12 32bit = OK
Then had to change my laptop with a new HP dv7.
What I did: Get a 8GB fast USB 3.0 flashdrive
Use GPARTED (4GB ROOT-3.5GB HOME and 500MB SWAP).
Disconnect HDD and install 64bit on FLASHDRIVE.
Only FUDUNTU is succelfull at this time.
SUCCESFULL on both flashdrive and usb-hdd
UBUNTU and MINT unsuccesfull.
Have been trying all I found in web to fix them.
Have been tryıng to change grub options.
Download and run boot repair tool etc etc.
All I get a flashing cursor or if press shift key
"GRUB loading" message.
UBUNTU 11.10 tested on USB HDD unsuccesful.
My QUESTION is: If we can boot using liveUSB we should
be able to boot after installing distro.
HOW CAN I use boot loader in liveUSB to boot my installed flashdrive?.
I have several flash drive partitioned.
I have a FUDUNTU installed GOFLEX usb 3.0 HDD.
I am a retired old fellow and lot of free time to try all reasonable suggestions.
Orhan

Hello. Your post is all over the place to let me try to get some order here.

My guess is this usb 3.0 choice is the problem.

For almost any distro of linux, a usb is as if any real hard drive. In fact the OS see's most drives a scsi access devices. Some specialized and older distro's still might use the hdx way.

What you did was correct. Disconnect the hard drive. Boot to the install cd and install the OS to the flash drive as if it were a real hard drive.

Problems that might happen are an oddity of usb. It is possible that the usb on reboot to some systems could have for example go from sda to sdb or such.

Bios and installer may have issues. On some bios's when you shutdown the system you have to power down the system are actually remove the usb device. For some reason when it was unmounted from the prior run it stays unmounted.

I'd go get an 8G usb 2.0 and re-try all this.

1 members found this post helpful.

Use to have a COMPAQ 32bit Multimedia PC. Stolen.
So new one is 64bit.
I have a desktop with GIGABYTE 945 board 32 bit.
Also have a VERBATIM (samsung) USB 2.0 hdd.
Already installed openSUSE and UBUNTU 10 32bit) and tested on both compaq
and my homemade desktop. was succesfull.
I have 2 usb3.0 and 2 USB2.0 ports on HP dv7.
What should I do: DOWNLOAD 32 bit and try on desktop with usb2.0 stick?
32bit code on SAMSUNG did not boot on 64bit, so I erased them.
Most of friends and relatives has 64bit PC and USB3.0
When installed on usb 2.0 will be relatively SLOW.
Today I tested FUDUNTU using 16GB SONY vault rd=120 and wr=90.
Very fast. Will get a 8GB USB 2.0 do the test, but I will not
give them anybody.

Install on a bit sandisk 8GB USB 2.0 ==>flashing cursor.
Try to boot 32bit desktop:
grub selection menu on scree.
Download FUPPY 32bit.
Will instal on USB 2.0 and 3.0 flash drive soon.
Another possibility is my NEW dv7 PC
Has 2 2TB hdd 8GB RAM but may have a problem.

USB hdd GOFLEX (fuduntu) boots on 32bit desktap
MINT on USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ok. (USB 2.0 is very slow)
UBUNTU Boots OK.
All 64bit.
Main suspect at this stage is my new PC.
HP will not help since Win7 happy with DV7.
Checking ATI HD6770M 2GB DDR5 VGA card.
Sooner or later will find the problem.
Thanks
Orhan

Do a search on these forums. There are few posts on the HP DV7 already.

Some of the other web pages suggest that a bios upgrade fixed some of the issues.

Most of the video issues rely on installing the proper video driver to the distro's. Worse comes to worse you should be able to use vesa still.

PCLINUXOS installed and booted on my HP DV7 and this update from DV7 booted using a usb3 flash drive.İnstalled internal HDD unplugged. Referance to many users having USB boot problem.

Are you saying it is fixed or still broken?

Installed FEDORA 20 on a 32GB usb3 Sandisk EXREME using EXTLINUX bootloader.
Now have a PC in pocket with 16GB user storage.
Just plug in any PC -boot and use.