Linux Support for USB 2.0 External Hard Drives
 

Does Linux support external USB v2.0 hard drives? I want to purchase an external USB hard drive to load Red Hat Linux but the data sheets for these external drives only mention support for Windows and Mac platforms.

My assumption is that I can load Red Hat Linux on the external USB hard drive (e.g. Maxtor 120 GB HD) and use the Windows XP boot managers and/or create a boot disk.

Any information that you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Chuck

Since the HD is USB 2.0, you may need kernel 2.6.0, since it's the only one to feature EHCI(usb 2.0).
Don't worry, kernel compiling is easier than it seems...

I think it should work(But I can't be suree)

I have a 80GB Iomega USB 2.0 that works flawlessly under RH8, just plug it in and mount it.

Once you mount your Iomega USB drive how do you boot Linux? Do you have a Boot Disk or use a Boot Manager?

what are u talking about? you boot in to linux first then mount your external hd.
so, that way you could access it.

Apparently you didn't read the original post, eh?

clbucher-

sorry I missed that, so you want to run the OS from there... not quite sure about that. Most of those things come preformatted as fat32 so you'd have to reformat, and yeah I guess you could do it but a boot disk would be necessary I think, or at least about the easiest way to go.

Does the install program recognize the ext USB drive ? If so you should be able to format it and choose it as the install destination.

I'm kinda curious as to if this will work, let us know.

Sorry for the confusion. I am currently running Windows XP Professional. My goal was to buy an external USB hard drive and load Linux onto it, assuming that Linux supported USB external drives (and it sounds like it does from previous posts).

I now need to determine how to boot Linux instead of Windows XP Professional. This area is very gray for me since I have not done this before. I am assuming that I have one of the following options (1) use Windows XP Boot Manager or 2) boot from CD or Floppy) and are looking for recommendations based on others experiences and best practice.

to cblucher~
what you trying to do was to install your linux box on an external hard drive and try to boot from it right?
I had been going through this kind stuff before, mandrake 9.1
the installation was easy you just have to reformat it which wasn't reformatting the whole drive, but splitting the one partitioned drive in to several partition. after you add those neccessary partitions. just let it install and there shouldn't be a problem. then problem was how you going boot it. you might try boot disk or add a /boot partition in your hd drive.

If you install an operating system to an external USB Mass storage device, you need to know that the device is bootable (usually not a problem if its a HDD). Then you need to determinte if your PC can boot from a USB device. Check in BIOS. If so, set the first boot device as USB HDD and you should be able to boot Linux.. Unplug the device while powered down to boot WinDos. Some people have had luck setting BIOS to boot from USB-ZIP if USB-HDD isn't available

AFAIK bootloaders can't boot USB devices so I doubt you can boot to a loader on the IDE HDD and from that boot the USB device (AFAIK!)