I want to buy an external hard disk to install linux on it , and to have the lilo or grub on a cd , so I won't have to modify the internal drive at all . Is that possible ?
I found a hard disk , actually I don't know if it's a hard disk or just a rack . It is found here : http://www.dcshop.ro/produs_vantec_r...k_10632_15.htm
If it's a hard disk then why doesmn't it say its capacity ?
Will the above hard disk (if it's a hard disk )work with linux ? If not , can someone tell me an external hard disk of at least 2 GB storage, which will work with linux , and on which I can install linux the way I said a couple of rows higher ?

Hi Aral,

The product you have described is just an empty enclosure, which by the looks could be fitted with any IDE drive. As it is USB, the drive will work fine in an installed Linux. However, I am really not sure about booting Linux from an external USB drive without changing anything on the internal drive, I do remember many BIOS's allow you to set an external drive as a bootable device, but you will probably have to try installing a distro to it to see if the distro installer handles it. The best way to make the internal disk not be written to is to disconnect it for the duration of the install, then reconnect it later and add it to the fstab if you require access to it later from inside the linux dist.

So - in answer to your final question, almost any USB hard drive, or enclosure fitted with a drive will work, but you will have some fun trying to get it installed there from the distro in the first place, and you *must* be able to set your bios to boot from an external USB device.

Cheers,
Danny

The link you posted is just an enclosure and does not contain a hard drive.

In general most should work without problems. My actual experience has been limited to Western Digital and Maxtor external drives (excluding flash drives). About the smallest new hard drive you can get these days is 40GB. If you want a min install and pocket portability then flash drives are up to 4GB now.

Actually I can't disconnect the internal disk cause I have a laptop .
Yeah , but can I boot from an flash drive ? If not then , isn't there some kind of lilo/grub on a cd with which I could boot every time I want to load linux from the flash drive ?

You ability to boot from an external USB drive depends on whether or not your system BIOS supports it. Get into BIOS, then check the options for the boot sequence. If "USB" is listed, then Yes you can, if not, you can't. (Naturally, if it does exist and you want to use it, you'd need to move the USB option ahead of the hard drive in the boot order)

It's my work laptop , and when I hit boot device priority it gives me the list of devices but I can't chnage the order .The list is :
+ Hard disk drive
+ Floppy disk drive
Cd Rom drive
but as I said I can;t change the order . So Usb is not listed .., but I also have "Preboot Execution Environment" - > disabled .. isn't that the reason for which Usb is not listed ? ( Obviosly I have no acces to enable "Preboot Execution Environment" as it's the work computer . )

PXE is a network boot device for installing OSs from a server or a diskless workstation and is unrelated to USB. Since you can not change the boot order I see no way of booting linux and your IS folks might frown if you modify the hard drive by changing the MBR.

Unfortunately , I don't know if I'll have acces to such a server to boot from network .. I'll have to wait and see . You're right about the IS guys , they won't like any modified MBR , or any partition dissapearing ; before I was hired I was told I can install linux on the laptop , but it depends to me to do it , and I said OK ; after they hired me they said it isn't possible .. and now I have to find the solution . I booted with knoppix 3.9 , but when I tried to compile my existing application in Kdevelop (cause that's what I'm trying to do after all )it gave me some errors like :
"No rules to make target : /home/corex/SC/Lic/test/src/main.c needet by main.o " , so I don't know what to do ..

"No rules to make target : /home/corex/SC/Lic/test/src/main.c needet by main.o"

That sounds like an entirely seperate issue. Does the file /home/corex/SC/Lic/test/src/main.c exist on your system?
Is the make file using the wrong path to build?
Is this an application you are developing in house somewhere, or an open source project you are trying to get to compile?

Danny

Well, yeah , seems like that path doesn't exist anymore , since I moved the application from my suse installaation , to knoppix , but where does it keep that path so I can change it .., or how do I correct this ?

Okay, that really depends on what you are trying to compile, but I would start by taking a look at the makefile.
Does the application come with a "configure" script? Maybe you need to re-run that.

It will be make that would have generated the message above. However, that makefile may have been autogenerated, hence why I would look and see if there is configure script and run it first.