Not sure this is the right area for this post but it seemed logical...

At any rate, I need some help with installation of openSUSE 10.2 on an external USB hard drive. I have read countless posts on various forums and tried as many solutions with no satisfaction. I am hoping someone can help me...

1) My setup: A Dell e1505/i6400 laptop about 4 months old, running Windoze XP Pro in a dual boot with Mandriva 2007 without any problems. I really don't want to do anything else with the internal hard drive on the laptop.

2) What I am trying to do: Install openSUSE 10.2 on a Seagate 80gb USB hard drive that will boot independently of the laptop when I want to. If I can get this distro working the way I hope, I would like to also install Ubuntu or some other distro so that I can experiment with several different distros until I find the one I like best. I am very new to linux but like what I have seen so far with Mandriva and also with an Ubuntu installation on another laptop that I have that is also running in dual boot with XP Pro.

3) What I have done so far: I have installed openSUSE on the laptop after removing the internal hard drive completely. The installation went fine and the OS boots up perfectly until I reinstall the internal hard drive. When I start up the laptop the openSUSE installation starts booting (I have modified the boot priorities in BIOS so that the USB device is ahead of the internal hard drive) but then stalls. I suspect there is some conflict between the 2 hard drives.

4) What I have tried so far:
a)I have tried new installation using expert mode so that I can configure the partitions, boot loader, etc. I think I understand what I am doing but it seems that the partitioning is looking at the internal hard drive as well as the USB hard drive. Is it going to change the partition scheme on the internal hard drive - the summary lists all of the partitions on both hard drives. The setup that it proposes for the USB hdd is fine but I am concerned about the internal hdd. Also, it is forcing selection of the swap partition on the internal hdd to use for the swap partition on the usb hdd. Is there a way to force it to use the partition I want it to, either during the installation or afterwards?

b) I have also tried using rescue mode from the dvd to edit the appropriate files to change hdd references but don't have enough confidence in my use of the command line or vi editor.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how I can proceed?

thanx....

It sounds like you're trying to do what I have done on my work laptop with an external USB HDD (albeit I did it with XP on the internal drive and Mandriva on the USB drive). I installed with the internal HDD in and just followed the instructions as normal; the installer showed the internal HDD, but Mandriva made it plain it wasn't going to overwrite or format anything on the internal drive. Does SuSE not do the same? Does it not show which partitions on which drives it's writing to/formatting?

Once I'd installed on the USB drive, it would just boot from there no problem and see the Windows drives once booted.

Maybe you're getting too worried that Linux is seeing the existing drives, even though it's not going to overwrite them?

I did also try with CentOS which just didn't work at all, so maybe some distributions are better than other at this?

what errors do you get when you try to boot off your usb drive?

hi

under your section #2 you said that you want to experiment with linux.
what I did was buy a second and third hard drive, and a handfull of hard drive
caddys. I have winxp pro on a 120 gig drive, Ubuntu 7.1 installed now on a 60 gig
drive, and 64 studio on a 40 gig drive. I use the 40 gig drive to experiment on.
trying out different distros etc isnt a problem if I only use the 40 gig drive, because
I will never mess up my working drive (Ubuntu).

hard dives are cheap on ebay, and drive caddys even cheaper. there is no head aches
this way either. If I dont like the install I havent messed up my working drive.

maybe this is a solution you can try. you already had an extra drive, so all you would
need is a drive caddy.

Vanessa