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Problems Booting from a USB Harddrive

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    Problems Booting from a USB Harddrive

    I have a Dell laptop and have recently upgraded the harddrive to 100GB. That left me with my older original 40GB drive to try out Kubuntu with!

    My goal is to boot off of my external USB drive ONLY when I want to be using Kubuntu. I set my bios to give the USB drive preference over the HDD, so that when I turned the machine on with the USB drive plugged in, I use Linux; and when I turn the machine on with it not plugged in, I use Windows.

    So as not to endanger my new Windows harddrive, I removed it and installed the old harddrive into the laptop. I then installed Kubuntu (I gave the drive 3 partitions: 20GB for /, 1.5GB for swap, and ~18GB for FAT32 in case I wanted to do some inter-OS swapping). The install went fine and Kubuntu was very impressive right out of the package. (It may very well make it's way to the 100GB drive someday!)

    Then I removed the 'Kubuntu harddrive' from the laptop and placed it in a USB harddrive enclosure (and replaced the Windows harddrive into the laptop), and attempted the grand experiment. ...turning it on with the USB drive plugged in!

    ...it didn't work.

    Grub found the USB drive, attempted to start the kernel, couldn't find some modules and failed. (I believe it was attempting to look at the primary drive rather than on the USB drive.)

    I attempted (on the advice of a friend) to change the /etc/fstab file to use sda1 instead of hda1, but that wasn't enough.

    SO...

    What files do I need to change (and how do I change them) in order for the startup sequence to look for the kernel & modules on the USB harddrive?

    ...whew.


    #2
    Re: Problems Booting from a USB Harddrive

    Although I haven't got it actually working yet, a broader search found:

    http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~quocminh/l...talllinux.html

    ...which contains several good links from there. It's Fedora Core-based, but the general outline matches kubuntu close enough.

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