On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 1:39 PM, Henry W. Peters <[email protected]> wrote: > On 8/28/2013 3:46 PM, czernitko wrote: >> >> Hi, it seems improbable that your desktop PC would have only one HDD slot. >> Could you post your exact model number please? :) >> To give you some hope, I have had Linux installed on external hdd for >> daily use for about two years. It is at least five years back, it was over >> USB 2.0 and worked quite well. I did some photo editing and retouching and >> it was ok. >> How big is your internal drive anyway? Isn't it possible to use around >> 30GB for Gentoo system partition? Or do you just want to keep original hdd >> intact? >> Regards, >> Peter >> >> Hi, >> If you really need a new drive (i.e. - the one that came with your >> machine is just too small, etc.) then I'd look at imaging the drive >> that's currently installed, putting in a larger drive, partitioning >> this larger drive to hold both Gentoo and what ever M$ OS you might be >> using, and then just work to get both OS's working but keep the >> current drive on the shelf as a backup. This way you could always go >> back to what you have. >> >> Just an idea. >> >> Good luck, >> Mark >> To the point of the original poster: I currently use a Lenovo W520 laptop. >> I have a USB3 external hard drive that I mostly use for backup, but I have >> occasionally edited some audio (small audio files using Audacity) directly >> on the external drive. Again, it's not the OS drive, so temp files and >> such >> are most likely stored on the internal drive, but I know that Audacity >> operates in the directory in which the project is located, so it's still >> doing a fair bit of I/O to that external drive. >> >> Hope this helps! >> >> ~David > > > Thanks all for helpful suggestions! > > First off, capacity of current internal drive is not really an issue with > me... it is 2 TB... I tried installing Gentoo on another (very much older > computer) a while ago & had problems installing Grub, with Gentoo, as I was > dual booting with windows (not to mention conflicts with xstart & my old > integrated SIS graphics card)... so my thinking is to install Gentoo on a > whole other HD... which seemed to work out on my old computer (or perhaps it > was simpler to do for a Gentoo novice, like myself). > > & Peter, I'm with you... I have not seen a desktop computer that didn't have > at least one expansion bay (not that I've seen that many)... but apparently > this HP Pavillion 500-046 does not. & I really had to dig to find out (the > hard way). > > Good to hear that some have had some measure of success with external drives > & Gentoo, rather sounds like I'll just have to try it... > > I have done a little more research since my earlier post, & I see that LaCie > (& possibly others) make/sell an external drive that has usb 2 & 3/firewire > 400 & 800/eSata (& there are, it seems, some extra Sata slots on the mother > board of this HP computer). > > My plan, in fact, after a installation of Gentoo... would be to shrink the 2 > TB partition that is currently formatted in NTS... (Windows 8), use the > other partition formatted in ext 4 (i.e., Linux) data storage. > > Henry > (who's trying hard to get away from windows, again (been using various > flavors of Linux for about five years) > >
Henry, A couple of points: 1) Not all computers will boot from an external USB drive. If you have one around you can maybe do some experiments before you invest a lot of time and find yourself stymied. 2) grub is not a requirement to boot Gentoo. There are links out there demonstrating how to modify the Windows boot config files to allow you to boot other OS's. I don't do it myself so I don't know what the state of the Win 8 boot loader is in that respect, but there were ways to do this with Win NT. If it's of interest then check it out. Good luck, Mark
