Is it possible to install programs for Lucid Puppy 528 onto a 2nd hard drive? I have Puppy installed on a 2gb Compact Flash drive. So, not a great deal of room on there. What I would like to do is to install an further programs/packages to a 2nd drive. Is this possible and then have Puppy be able to see and use those programs?

Sorry, I have looked at the various Wiki articles and other bits and pieces and I am more than a little confused. It seems that Puppy will want to install to the drive where it is installed. Which is not ideal in this case especially with larger programs such as Libre Office, Chromium, Firefox etc. Ok, not really big files but they will soon eat up a 2gb drive..

Why not mount the software installation location (like /usr) on a separate drive? You can rsync all of the data in the /usr folder to the drive preserving ownership and permissions and then add an entry in /etc/fstab to mount the new drive on the mount point /usr (or where ever puppy installs its software).

Ah, I see what you mean, just about. I'm not a newcomer to Linux having first used it back in about 1997. However, I've only ever really skimmed the surface and have never been able to wean myself off MS Windoze in all those intervening years. Until now Anyway, in a standard Linux set up I would be able to do this as you suggest. With Puppy these files do not exist... It is all done in a very different way. Hence my puzzlement.... Normally, user data is held in /home in Puppy it's in a save file. As I say, quite different..

After reading more about puppy (I don't use it myself) it seems to run completely in RAM and any changes to settings or software installations are saved on USB disk in a file called pup_save.2fs. That being said it should be trivial to just order a new USB drive. Why make it more complicated than it needs to be? If you run out of space on your 2GB flash drive then throw money at the problem. It costs $4 for an 8GB flash drive ($6 if you include shipping). I would just do that rather than over complicate your setup.

Agreed I could do this; though CF drives are significantly more expensive than that over here in the UK The thing is, I have loads of small size hard drives that are just sitting on a shelf gathering dust I have from 6gb up to 80gb. So, I would really like to utilise them. You are quite right about 'pup_save.2fs', but I was of the understanding that it was personal configuration files that were stored here? I could be wrong... it wouldn't be the first time. Even if I can add which ever programs I want to the hard drive and just have Puppy link to them at boot would be good. I have asked the same question on one of the dedicated Puppy forums so maybe somebody who is more conversant with the OS will know? I shall certainly report back here with whatever I can find out as it may help somebody else in the future

Thank you for you help it is very much appreciated

Ah, just looked at those flash drives you mentioned. They are USB sticks or thumb drives as we call them. I have Puppy installed on a Compact Flash card not a USB drive. This particular PC, though made in around 2006 does not support USB booting Besides, I deliberately wanted to use the CF card to just boot from. Sorry for any confusion.

Along similar lines.. I could get hold of a SD to IDE adaptor and install to an SD card. Now those are dropping in price like a brick. I picked up two 16gb SD cards (ok, only class 6) for less than £10 just a couple of weeks ago. Which equates to around $17US But, again, I already have the CF cards sitting around doing nothing and to me it's all about using stuff that might otherwise be discarded. Plus I don't like spending money if I can help it (the SD cards excluded because I needed them for my camera).