A while back I installed OpenSuse on an external HDD, everything went smooth. The problem was with the way the boot loader did things.

Windows on my main drive wouldn't boot without the external HDD being plugged in. Since then I re-installed windows(now 7) and want to do the dual boot again. What can I do differently this time so my Ex-HDD isn't a "key" to my computer >.>

I hope this made sense and an easy fix. Thanks in advance, Nav.

To prevent this, you must install grub into the external HDD instead of the default (which is the internal HDD)
During installation, there should be an option to select where to install grub.

With this you will need to select to boot the external HDD from your PC's BIOS. Most modern PCs have this option by pressing Esc or F12 for a boot menu.

You need to install the openSUSE boot-loader to the MBR on the external. Some installers offer the option, but over-write the MBR on the internal regardless. Leading to the problem you had. Been too long since I did OpenSUSE to say if you can handle this during the install, or have to fix it later.

I have my main Linux grub boot loader installed on the internal hard drive master boot record. And the several Linux installed on my external drive have their grub installed on their root partitions boot sectors. So then I add all other Linux /boot/grub/menu.lst boot lines to the main grub boot menu file, (and the XP is added from a internal drive Linux install), or I also can chainload to the external drive grubs, to boot up each one from there. And all the internal hard drive operating systems will boot up fine when the external eSATA drive is not connected. Here are some sites for help; http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showt...hreadid=147959 ,and check this web site too; http://apcmag.com/howto_home.htm , you could just install 1 more Linux onto the internal drive, with the grub boot loader there on MBR, then add in the others.