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Can I install Ubuntu onto an exterior hard drive to install into another computer?
Hello everybody,
My daughter has an Acer Aspire One Netbook with a broken Hard Drive and she lives 75 miles away, so I would like to visit her and take with me a new hard drive with Ubunto already installed. I have a new hard drive for her netbook and a caddy to connect to my own PC. I also have a downloaded copy of Ubuntu saved on my PC and also burned to CD. My question is: If I have the new hard drive running in the caddy as an exterior hard drive to my own PC, can I install Ubunto direct to it, and can I then transfer the hard drive to my daughter's netbook? If yes, would one of you kind folk explain to me what the procedure is? Many thank in advance. oovee. |
it should work but it will install all the specific drivers for the pc used during the install. when you try to frankenstein it to the other pc it mite complain that the audio/video/wifi/ethernet/... module wont load due to non-existant hardware.
i would just bring a live-usb and run/install it on the target machine with the other usb drive plugged in. |
I have tried mint like this. It worked without any problem (it even detected and adjusted the drivers). But it was notably slower than the hdd (obviously it is USB).
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That said, as schneidz indicated, there might be some issues with Ubuntu complaining about its current driver configuration. However, this is rarely the case; most Linux distributions - Ubuntu included - do a good job of adapting themselves in the event of a hardware change - even one as drastic as entirely different computers. One issue that might arise, however, is the use of proprietary drivers; my suggestion here is to not install such drivers until the hard drive is installed in the netbook, since the flexibility of a proprietary-driver setup is unpredictable. |
I make hundreds of usb flash drive installs each year with almost zero issues. There is nothing in the way a modern linux install that would be an issue to using an external drive.(for the most part)
The issue you may face is the resources in the netbook. Be sure to select a distro that is known to work well with that system. Nic may be the biggest problem you'll face and second may be some video issues. Bring maybe one or two live cd's or usb's just in case you need help or drivers or such. I almost always make external disk installs with a virtual machine. If you do attempt to make an install BE SURE to remove your current internal hard drives so that you can't make any mistakes. Be sure to boot to the bios with usb attached and see that it shows up in your bios as a hard drive order choice. You normally don't want to select a usb boot order choice. Boot to cd/dvd and install and update. Get any apps you think she may need while you are installing. Like I said, get some ideas on others running linux on this system to decide what issues. Some nic's are stinkers. |
Thank you all for your generous assistance and ideas, I'm a bit overwhelmed that you all have taken the time to help me.
I have taken on board all of your suggestions and will take the plunge at the week-end when I will be able to do the deed uninterrupted. Jefro, You mentioned a possible issue with the netbook's resources. Is there a better, or more suitable system than Ubuntu for the laptop, I am totally in the dark on this matter. I'll keep reading all of your posts again and again between now and the week-end, just to be clear about the task in hand. In the meantime folks, many, many thanks, you are all diamonds. oovee |
Ram, nic and video seem to be biggest issues.
See this for some tips. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_Aspire_One I looked up some generic web pages and it looks like you may wish to consider maybe xbuntu. Regular ubuntu may work but I can't guess this far away. Other posts might help like. http://community.acer.com/t5/Noteboo...nux/td-p/21173 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1838631 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_Aspire_One |
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