1

I know that there are many sources available online regarding the installation of a bootable Ubuntu on an external HDD. Many of them are difficult to translate for the computer-technical illiterate such as myself. My goal is to partition a 160GB storage device that I had lying around and I would like to install a bootable for kali linux, ubuntu, and mint, but also allocate some space on the drive that will allow me to save information -- which I guess is known as a live or persistent.

  1. Do I partition the HDD before using the Linux USB Loader program to create the live boot file? What should be the size for each of the 3 partitions?

  2. Is the .iso file saved on a separate partition than the profile/settings that I wish to maintain as the "persistent" data?

  3. Are there any hazards or limitations to installing multiple bootables on one drive?

This is the allocated HDD from the terminal:

/dev/disk4s2
/dev/disk4s3
/dev/disk4s4
/dev/disk4s5

Would the install command be grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/disk4s? If not, please explain why it is not.

Kalle Richter
  • 6,519
wellington
  • 111

2 Answers2

2

  1. Essentially you will create 4 EXT4 partitions, 3 for your 3 distributions and 1 for data, commonly accessed by all 3. Use that data partition as /home for all 3, and install grub on MBR

  2. You are not saving any iso, you are actually installing them as on internal hdd

  3. Kindly ensure that, the ext hdd case has sufficient ventilation, to avoid disk wear and tear real fast

All you need are the iso live disks and install normally as you install Linux, selecting the correct hdd.

In case you want just multi bootable installation images, then you may use Yumi from http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

Hope it helps

Arijit Chatterjee
  • 1,173
0

Document all that you do, because it may very well blow up, as it did for me. You will likely have to do it all over again. Or, you may want to buy a bigger hard drive and repeat the entire process. Document it!

Good_Guesser
  • 46