Hi Everyone,

I'm attempting to install Mandriva 2007 on my new external USB hard drive I've bought (it's a 120GB WD Passport one).

I've already installed this distro on the old PC I use for tinkering (on it's internal drive), but I want to use Linux with my laptop without touching the internal drive (a common scenario I expect).

The laptop I have is an HP Pavilion DV2000 - and the problem I'm having is that when the DVD boots and I start to go through the installation steps, when it gets to the partitioning screen, it only shows the internal drive (shown as sda1) - the USB drive isn't available.

I've gone into the BIOS on startup to move the boot order of the USB hard drive to top of the list - and had thought this would have been enough for it to be recognised. The drive itself is straight out of the packaging, and has a single FAT32 partition.

Can anyone shed some light on what the problem here is? I've read other accounts saying that Mandriva installed onto an external hard drive with no problems ... I'd like to be able to do the same :-)

Many thanks.

When you got to the partitioning screen, were there one or two tabs toward the top left? I have two physical drives here, and each has its own tab, one for hda, and the other for hdb. For your case, the first (internal) drive will have a tab labeled sda and the second (external USB) drive should have a tab labeled sdb. The first (internal) drive will be displayed by default. To see the second drives information you must click the sdb tab to bring it forward.

I do not use USB drives here, so I do not have any direct experience to pass along, but you could get a copy of Mandriva One (an installable live CD) and boot from it to see if the USB drive is listed in 'MCC / Mount Points / Create, delete, and resize hard disk partitions' (looks just like the partitioning screen in the installer). If you see the drive, close MCC and click the Live Install icon on the desktop to start the Mandriva One Install Wizard.

HTH,

Thanks Ernie,

On the partition screen, there was only a single 'sda' drive available (i.e one tab and not two).

In my frustration, I downloaded a live Ubuntu distro and found I could install once it had booted - it detected both drives and I was able to install and run Ubuntu quite easily ... so your idea of using Mandriva One is spot on. I think I'll go off and give this a try now.

Many thanks !