Booting Linux from an external source?
 

i know that it is very possible to boot from an internal slave drive with must distributions of Linux such as Ubuntu. But my question is, is it possible to boot from an external hard drive connect via a Usb or fire wire with Ubuntu. Thanks any feed back would be helpful. the reason why i wish to do this is because i have several computer but do not wish to install Linux on all of them and the ease of bringing files with you. the primary computer i am going to be using this on is a dell latitude 630 with a a hard drive case connected with a usb connection. thanks again.

Minimum of three ways:

1. If your computer will boot directly from external devices, then you can put the boot code there.
2. Use boot code on the internal drive.
3. Use boot code on a floppy,

See if the "booting" link below helps. Beyond that, tell us more about the details of you current setup.

Hi GraphiteG4
It is very likely that you can boot from an external USB HD. You should try to change the boot order in your BIOS settings to have your USB device above your internal HDs.
If you can't tell your BIOS to look in your USB HD first, I guess you can install a boot loader such as grub on your internal HD and configure it to load Linux from your external USB HD. This is more complicated and I guess more hardware/software specific. So if you need to do it this way, Google for grub configuration or ask in a more specialized forum. I would also look into using Super GRUB - a nice utility to config GRUB.
Hope that will help you somehow.