Boot Linux from a FireWire Device
By Martyn Honeyford2005-04-12
Installing Linux on Removable Drives
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Obtaining an external drive is a great way to breathe new life into older hardware, or allow you to use Linux on machines on which you can't (or don't want to) alter the internal hard drives.
Say you want to use Linux in a dual-boot arrangement, but you don't have any free space on your computer's hard drive. One solution would be to use a "live" Linux distribution such as Knoppix, which can be run directly from CD. This is certainly viable for occasional use, but it has a number of serious drawbacks:
• You will still require some permanent storage for your data files. A floppy disk may be suitable if you only work with very small files, or a USB flash memory key may suffice for medium-sized files, but neither of these is ideal.
• When using a "live" CD, it is at best difficult -- and at worst, impossible -- to install your own applications, or to customize existing applications.
• There is a performance penalty to using live distributions, most notably on start-up while all of the devices are being detected -- but also while running (as everything has to be loaded from CD, which is usually much slower than from the hard drive).
To be sure, other options also exist. For instance, you could buy another internal drive and install Linux on that. But often, you may not have any free drive bays in your case (this is particularly true of laptops, which typically only allow one internal hard drive).
Or, you could replace the current drive with a larger one, and install Linux in the resulting extra space. This, however, is a very time-intensive option, as it requires you to reinstall your existing OS on the new drive, reinstall and reconfigure all of your applications, and restore all of your data.
A much better solution is to purchase an external hard drive and install Linux on that. This lets you leave your existing hardware and software untouched and simply connect the external drive when you want to use Linux.
Tutorial Pages:
» Installing Linux on Removable Drives
» Removable Drive Options
» Linux Support
» Installation
» Booting
» Building the Boot Image
» Resources
First published by IBM DeveloperWorks
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