External Hard Drive operating system

[Mellbelljanell]

My brother thinks my netbook's hardrive is dead. I have an external hard drive, and I know how to tell my netbook to boot it first, but I'm not sure how to go about installing an operating system onto it. Any ideas? I'm not half as smart as I think I am when it comes to computers so if you can make the instructioins simple?

Maybe I should also mention that I have been able to my USB flash drive to load DOS onto the netbook.

 

[KSoD]

This is a tough task at best. Windows does not like to be installed to a external device at all. Vista and Win7 can't be. This feature is removed and you must modify the install to even get it to install to external media.

XP can do it but at best you are talking a 1 in 1,000 shot when you boot. As Windows reassigns the external device a new ID every boot and could cause the boot information to not work properly. Which would mean trouble shooting the boot information if Windows does not boot.

Your best option, would be to use a BartPE or Linux LiveCD or even install Linux to the External media. As Linux doesnt have those issues like Windows does.

 

[Mellbelljanell]

I wouldn't mind putting LINUX on the external. I've only ever used windows, but I'm willing to learn...How would I go about putting Linux on the external drive though?

My Desktop runs XP if that helps. My netbook used to run XP

 

[KSoD]

I am not a Linux expert by any means. I have only dabbled in it for a short period of time. I would advise checking out Ubuntu and their Forums. They have a wealth of knowledge that is beyond anything that i could even scratch at.

By far Ubuntu is the easiest jump from Windows to Linux. Might even consider Kubuntu. As Ubuntu uses what they call Gnome and Kubuntu uses KDE. KDE is more closely related to Windows user interface than Gnome.

 

[Dazeh]

To be honest, I would just buy a new small laptop harddrive; to test with, Because i believe XP running off an external source would be extremily slow. Especially on a netbook.