Linux distro installing on an external HD?

Ubuntu
1

I have an external HD , MY PASSPORT ULTRA never used .
I would like to install a Linux distro [ Mint / Ubuntu ] on it
My PC is a Win 10 , Acer AX3995-EF308 , and of course it has
the new BIOS boot order .
Annoyingly so !
Thank you ,
William.

2

are you looking for a step-by-step how-to? or help figuring out what to install? can you provide some more details?

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3

Step by step if possible .

4

is this your first linux installation or are you familiar with linux?

iā€™m not sure what you mean by that statement. can you explain?

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5

This is probably a very unfortunate way of describing UEFI.

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I believe one of the first things you will have to do is take the WD security off of your Passport. You might be able to do it by a re-format of the WD disk, but I never have done it.

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He may mean the boot order of the PC. Which device the PC look at first. Like CD-Rom, USB, then HD.

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8

I have installed my Linux flavours on my old pc and laptop but the boot

order was simple ie Bios . UEFI is the problem so I purchased an external HD thinking I could

bypass this problem I have not experimented with this yet.

9

i have installed a few distros to my external, but that was all on my legacy-booting mbr system with grub already installed on my internal drive. seems to me the only real issue (with the install. getting win10 to play nice after the install and not kill your grub [or so i have read] will be a different issue) is how to get grub installed on to your efi partition. thatā€™s not something i have played with yet, but i think a few others here have.

i was watching a video the other day that had a part that described dealing with efi on an internal drive install. it was a few years old and not exactly your situation, but i could link it if you want to take a look.

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Please do send the link .

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Please do send the link .

13

Generally speaking, you can always have any GNU/Linux distro installed on an external stick/hdd and boot from it.
More specific, itā€™s a question of how do you want to boot?
Do you want the installed bootmanager of the PC to contain the option of your USB-distro, or simply press (whatever) F-key to bypass the ā€œnormalā€ boot of your machine.

I donā€™t quite understand this. Why should one have to do this?
Is this a ā€œfeatureā€ of WD USB hdds (especially Ultra)?
I own several WD discs myself (Elements) and had never such a need.
Just askinā€™ā€¦

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14

Thanks for asking that Eddie I was wondering why myself? I mean about removing the security (to be clearer)

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15

Hi, I own several WD external HD and each one of them has the following files on them.
autorun.inf, Unlock.exe, and WD Quick Formatter.exe plus two folders called
Extras and Wd SmartWare.
I run Unlock.exe under Windows to gain access to the WD disk. Now I havenā€™t brought any WD disks in the past couple years, so maybe they have changed things. By running the unlock exec, I am able to password protect the disk drive.

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16

So this reads like the hdds are encrypted by default?
I canā€™t believe this, because obviously WD cannot be serious to expect, that every single customer uses Windows or a Macā€¦

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Hi Fast.Edi, Up until 4 months ago, I was a Window only user. I thought having the WD disks password protected was kind of neat, esp since when I got my first WD disk windows did not even offer encryption.
I only want to give you a caution. I would be surprise if the WD disks could not be formatted to be used w/o their encryption. But, I have not try it. I do know that when I google or search the web on ā€˜Linux how to use western digital my passportā€™ I get lots and lots of hits.

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18

Maybe that you donā€™t needs of new bios boot order
because that you is using an external hdd *
(*) not sureā€¦ :warning:

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Wouldnā€™t a Linux user rather encrypt the HDD themselves instead of relying on proprietary software? Especially encryption software should never be proprietary, ever, except it is made by yourself and you donā€™t disclose the source code.

20

Found this which sounded interesting.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=270308

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at the 1:20:00 (so one hour and twenty minutes in) mark is when the instructor is choosing the efi partition to install grub to. you said you have installed other distros in the past, so you know there is always the possibility of data loss or corruption. if i wanted to keep the win10 partition, i would definitely have a solid (clonezilla would be my choice in this instance) backup just in case.

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