External USB Drive boot

[blah19]

Hey,
I would like to boot linux (Ubuntu) from a external USB hard drive(my internal is toast) on a laptop. Only problem is: Toshiba does not offer a bios that supports booting off of a usb device, so my question is: Is there any alterinitive bios that DOES support usb booting that I can put on that will still support windows? If not is there such a thing as a bootable USB boot assist cd (that boots up and loads the USB drivers and continues the boot to any usb device)?
Thanks,

 

[The General]

You could boot from CD usualy Knoppix or the sort.

 

[blah19]

I am doing that, but you cant save anything

 

[The General]

Okay it's kind of complicated to put a Linux distro on an external harddrive and use it. What you could do is unplug the internal harddrives and boot to a Linux install disc, install it on the external harddrive and that should work. There are also embedded linux distros like D*mn Small Linux, that you can easily put on like a USB Flash keychain. It's kind of hard to get those to work to.....

 

[blah19]

so there is no CD that will preload the drivers then pass it off? I've also heard of linuxbios

 

[Nuxology]

One of my machines has no HDD and I use "Puppy Linux" booting from CD and saving to a flashdrive...works great and easy to set up.

 

[jakec]

Blah19,

you are far better off replacing the laptop HDD than trying to boot from an external one, particularly since your laptop does not have the option to boot from an External HDD. It would be a whole lot of mucking around, and quite honestly ain't worth it. if your going to boot from an external device use either CD or USB key, CD would be the way to go and then use that in conjunction with a USB key to save your files as Nuxology has suggested.

you might also want to check out this link, however I cannot garentee this will work ( it is 5.10 they are doing this with) : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811


you could also look at UbuntUSB, it allows you to install Ubuntu on an External HDD with no Bios setting whatsoever, it costs though 29EUR which is about $37US
http://www.zinside.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=79&language=en

also have you tried turning the machine on with the External HDD connected, if you go into the bios it might show up as another Drive, then you can boot from it I've Seen it done before. Just a thought

ciao,

Jake