Booting from hard drive in USB enclosure

android6011 · 07-25-2006, 06:05 PM

I have a laptop, which means I cant have an extra hard drive just thrown into the case. I have a few old hard drives, one 40G and one 5G. I was looking into the enclosures to put the drives in and use them via USB. My question is if I will run into any problems running installing and booting linux from the drive in this way? I am able to boot DSL from a small USB thumb drive I have so I can boot from USB in that way. THanks

J.W. · 07-25-2006, 07:15 PM

No, it should be fine. If your BIOS supports booting from USB, then you will be able to boot from a USB enclosure. I've got a small Vantec enclosure, and although I seldom use it, it's a great "ace up the sleeve"

android6011 · 07-25-2006, 08:20 PM

Are there any recommendations on which I should use? Preferably one I can find at Circuit City because that is the only local comp store that I feel comfortable buying from. THanks

chrisortiz · 07-25-2006, 09:32 PM

try ebay, i bought a 2.5" enclosure for $.99 with $8.99 shipping the only problem i had was solved by adding (append="rootdelay=10") to my lilo file.

J.W. · 07-25-2006, 11:08 PM

check out NewEgg Even with shipping, their total cost is often below the local retailer's, and I can confidently say that NewEgg Rocks! I pretty much buy everything from them, and have never had a problem

android6011 · 08-01-2006, 10:27 PM

What type of enclosure do I need? I see a lot of them on newegg. The hard drive I need one for is one I pulled out of a 4 yr old PC, so what specifications should I look for? Thanks