Can Puppy be installed to External Hard Drive? (Solved)

[stevie pup]

I wanted to install to a portable hard drive simply so that I could have all my documents, music, videos, etc all on the same drive as the Puppy, instead of fiddling around with 2 or 3 drives. But it's not having it.

I do the first couple of steps and then an error message comes up telling me there's nothing plugged in. I've tried with 3 different Puppies and with 3 different drives, same thing happens every time. I know there's nothing wrong with the drives, 2 of them have had other distros installed previously, one of them still has another distro on it, and no problems have arisen. It'll recognise any USB stick I plug in, but not an external HDD.

I'm sure this issue has come up before from somebody else, but I can't find it now and it was quite a while ago, so may even have been on the old forum.

I've found a work around, I've put the ISO on the drive using YUMI, which for the benefit of anyone who's interested I found more convenient than Ventoy. It was slightly more fiddly initially, but once it was done there was no problem creating save files, the save was recognised straight away when I rebooted, and the rest of the drive was free for me to do what I wanted with. It works for me.

I would still like to know what the issue is though, with installing straight to an external drive.

[bigpup]

I do the first couple of steps and then an error message comes up telling me there's nothing plugged in.

There are a lot of installer programs you could be using.

Need specific information what installer you using?

It'll recognise any USB stick I plug in, but not an external HDD.

You most likely did not also install a boot loader to boot the Puppy you installed.
If you do frugal installs of Puppy.
You need to also install a boot loader to boot them.
.
.
I have Puppy booting from an external portable hard drive with a bunch of different Puppy versions on it. 1TB drive.

I did this all in a booted Puppy version (Fossapup64 9.5)

First I setup the drive using Gparted program.
Made a new partition table msdos.
Partitioned into several different partitions.
Formatted partitions a Linux ext3 or 4 format.
Formatted one partition ntfs so windows OS would be able to see and use it.

Used the Frugalpup installer program to do the installs and install a boot loader on the drive.
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=1588#p1588
General way to use it:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=1887#p1887
(this is about a multiple installs to a USB stick, but it is the same for a hard drive)

NOTE:
Not sure what type bios your computer has.
Mine is a UEFI, but I have it setup to operate in legacy mode.
So, a msdos partition table setup works OK.

If you need to have UEFI compatible drive setup.
Choose GPT for partition table.
Make the first partition a small 300MB size, fat32 format. This will be the boot partition.
Make sure to tell Frugalpup installer to install the uefi boot loader to this partition.

[mikewalsh]

@stevie pup :-

Mm. As m'colleague says, for what you want to do, you need to set the external drive up with its own bootloader. For installing your Puppy, if it was me, I'd do a "quick'n'dirty" job. I don't use the specially-written utilities intended for this job - oooh, naughty Mike! - in fact, I don't use utilities or installers of ANY kind; I simply copy the files across & set everything up manually. It's not that I don't like using the utilities, but they're not flexible enough to allow for some of the custom 'tweaks' I perform while I'm doing all this.....and if I don't perform them AT install time, they don't work as intended.

----------------------------------------------

Not knowing how many partitions your external drive has, if you don't intend wiping and re-doing everything from scratch, then DO use gParted to make sure, before you start, that the external drive's first partition is marked as 'bootable'. This is where the bootloader will go.

• Create a directory for your Puppy with an easy-to-recognize/remember name, on whichever partition you want to use.

• Mount the Puppy's ISO, then copy the entire contents over to the directory you've just created.

• Run Grub4DOS. Set it to look ONLY in the external drive, then run it through as normal to install the bootloader to the first partition.

----------------------------------------------

That's the Puppy install taken care of. Depending on how you want to use it, there's a couple of ways you can boot:-

• Most computers will have, somewhere, a "one-time boot menu".......usually accessed by one of the function keys, or it could be either Escape or Delete. Use this to choose the drive you wish to boot from; the external hard-drive should be recognised, if set-up properly. This is much the simplest way.

• Or - if you wish to run the "external" Puppy from another, existing Puppy machine - you could edit that machine's existing Grub4DOS menu to do what's called "chain-loading", i.e., pass control over to the bootloader on the external drive. This then saves messing about with the "one-time" menu every time you want to boot the external Puppy.

---------------------------------------------

That's how I, personally, would approach the exercise. I can't remember the last time I actually used the built-in Puppy utilities to do this stuff. I'm not a very good advert for the community, am I?

Mike.

[greengeek]

Could be the hard drive going to sleep. Sometimes when that happens Puppy allocates it a different sdx designation.

I use SSD drives for external booting as they do not seem to "power down" the way mechanical hard drives do.

[xenial]

Just to add.
i have 2 pups installed on a external hard drive and i did it the cheap and nasty way.
I created a partition and then flagged it as boot.

i then extracted the iso and then open the extracted iso and copy all the files over to the external partition.
I then ran grub4dos on the external drive and rebooted.

It runs perfectly and has done for a couple of years..
I don't use any installers and have used the manual method and it works everytime.

[mikewalsh]

@xenial :-

Just to add.
i have 2 pups installed on a external hard drive and i did it the cheap and nasty way.
I created a partition and then flagged it as boot.

i then extracted the iso and then open the extracted iso and copy all the files over to the external partition.
I then ran grub4dos on the external drive and rebooted.

It runs perfectly and has done for a couple of years..
I don't use any installers and have used the manual method and it works everytime.

Like I said, it's not that I won't use the installers. It's good that so many community members have chipped-in to help with developing these things, because Windoze users in particular expect GUIs, since that's all they've ever known. But after you've been at this for a few years, and you're beginning to get so's you have at least a vague idea of what you should be doing (!!) , for myself I find the 'official utilities' actually slow me down, and seem to take ten times longer!

Mike.

[stevie pup]

Thank you to everyone for the responses, looks like there are a few alternative methods for me to look at over the weekend. But before I get carried away and start spending hours on it I have one question. Will any of these methods give any particular advantage over the YUMI set up I've done?

After all, it's already done and it works without issues (I'm typing this from it now). I've currently got two Puppies on it and it's simple to add further Pups, or other Linux distros for that matter.

One further thing, although I've been using Puppy for almost 3 years I've never installed one, just ran them from USB sticks. So for the purpose of this thread I think I need to be treated as a beginner.

[mikewalsh]

@stevie pup :-

TBH, if your current set-up works for you, and permits doing everything you want it to do, then stick with it. Everything mentioned above is but variations on a theme.....and as to whether any of 'em are 'better' for you than what you're currently using, only time & personal testing could allow you to make such a judgement.

After all, everybody's use-case varies. Use what works for YOU. I certainly do.

Mike.

[stevie pup]

@stevie pup :-

TBH, if your current set-up works for you, and permits doing everything you want it to do, then stick with it. Everything mentioned above is but variations on a theme.....and as to whether any of 'em are 'better' for you than what you're currently using, only time & personal testing could allow you to make such a judgement.

After all, everybody's use-case varies. Use what works for YOU. I certainly do.

Mike.

Thanks for that Mike, that is usually the approach I take. But you know how it is, sometimes when asking a question about something somebody suddenly mentions a detail that had never crossed your mind. Anyway, I think I will continue using it as is for the time being, then if anything crops up that doesn't work properly I'll flag it up.

[mikewalsh]

@stevie pup :-

I look at it this way, mate. Manual installs are my preferred way of doing things now, and have been for some years. If I cock it up, and make mistakes, I've only got myself to blame......haven't I?

Mike.

[stevie pup]

Well I've given it a go, but unsuccessfully I'm afraid, so here's a run down. The laptop I'm using is from 2009, so as you'll guess it's Legacy BIOS. The external hard drive just has one partition (the whole drive), formatted EXT3 and the Boot flag set.

Created a new directory, then copied and pasted the entire contents of Puppy ISO. Then ran Grub4Dos, made absolutely sure I picked correct drive. Everything seemed ok at this point, well I hadn't had any error messages or anything like that. So shut down, removed USB's and just left the external HD plugged in.

Pressed the button to boot it back up and promptly got a message on screen saying "Missing Operating System", or words to that effect. So I'm guessing I've missed something somewhere along the way, but I don't know what. Any suggestions?

I've left the drive as is for the time being, so I can go back to it and make any modifications necessary. But needless to say I'm glad I've also kept my YUMI set up.

[bigpup]

Pressed the button to boot it back up and promptly got a message on screen saying "Missing Operating System", or words to that effect.

You did select in the bios, to make the external hard drive, the boot device, to boot the computer?

What you did should have worked.

You do not say, if you see a Grub4dos menu, when you boot the computer?
You should.
From that menu, you select the Puppy you installed to boot it.

So it never gets to showing the Grub4dos boot menu?

When you setup Grub4dos config.
You selected the external hard drive as device to install on.
Selected: search only within this device?
Use the default settings for everything else?
When asked said yes to install to mbr?

[amethyst]

The partition which you are booting from must be a bootable partition. Set the boot flag with GParted.

[stevie pup]

The boot flag is definitely set. If I look at the drive in Gparted now it shows EXT3 under file system and on the right hand side under Flags it shows boot. Gparted is one aspect of all this that I am already well familiar with, having used it countless times previously.

Yes the computer is set up to boot from external drive, and I don't have any problem booting any other external drives or USB sticks. I think I'll run Grub4Dos again, there is a chance I missed something, such as not putting a tick in a box somewhere, although I'm positive I chose the right drive to install on.

No it doesn't show the Grub4Dos boot menu, it just goes straight to the "Missing Operating System" message. I may not have the chance to experiment further until Sunday, but when I do I'll let you know how I get on.

[mikewalsh]

@stevie pup :-

Now; I've just thought of something. It may be relevant, it may not.

I'll hazard a guess that the external drive is a USB 3.0 one, yes? And I'll also guess that you are in fact plugging this in via a USB 2.0 port.....yes?

I know I had issues doing this very same thing some years ago. At some point during the early stages of the USB 3.0 roll-out, it was quickly discovered that some USB 'hubs' would not boot from an external USB 3.0 device. At the time I was using a USB 3.0 add-in card, to give the old Compaq rig some USB 3.0 ports....only to find that if I wanted to boot anything, the card wouldn't handle it, and I had to use the existing USB 2.0 ones instead.

Around that same time, I read several posts on assorted fora, bemoaning the fact that some PCs couldn't even do that.....largely due to the "bridge card" many of them used to convert the drive's internal SATA connection to a USB interface. The controller chips wouldn't handle booting.

As I say, it might be relevant, but there again, it probably isn't. Just thought it was worth mentioning, though.

Mike.

[Phoenix]

The boot flag is definitely set. If I look at the drive in Gparted now it shows EXT3 under file system and on the right hand side under Flags it shows boot. Gparted is one aspect of all this that I am already well familiar with, having used it countless times previously.

Yes the computer is set up to boot from external drive, and I don't have any problem booting any other external drives or USB sticks. I think I'll run Grub4Dos again, there is a chance I missed something, such as not putting a tick in a box somewhere, although I'm positive I chose the right drive to install on.

No it doesn't show the Grub4Dos boot menu, it just goes straight to the "Missing Operating System" message. I may not have the chance to experiment further until Sunday, but when I do I'll let you know how I get on.

Has the MBR been written to? Sounds like its trying to read that and either it is 'blank' or it points to somewhere non-existent.

[greengeek]

Well I've given it a go, but unsuccessfully I'm afraid, so here's a run down. The laptop I'm using is from 2009, so as you'll guess it's Legacy BIOS. The external hard drive just has one partition (the whole drive), formatted EXT3 and the Boot flag set.

Created a new directory, then copied and pasted the entire contents of Puppy ISO. Then ran Grub4Dos, made absolutely sure I picked correct drive.

I think you should make two partitions instead of only one.
Make the first partition Fat32. This is the one where Grub4dos will do its stuff. Make this partition bootable and set the lba flag too.
Second partition make EXT3 and copy the directory with the puppy files from the iso contents as you did before.

Now run Grub4dos against the first partition (FAT32). Then power off and remove/replug the HDD then power on and try to boot.

Any change to the error message?

[stevie pup]

@stevie pup :-
I'll hazard a guess that the external drive is a USB 3.0 one, yes?

Sorry Mike, nice try but no, the external drive is only USB2.0. As all my machines are fairly old they all have USB2.0 ports, so I've never bothered getting any USB3.0 drives.

Make the first partition Fat32. This is the one where Grub4dos will do its stuff. Make this partition bootable and set the lba flag too.

If I go down this route what size should I make this first partition? I'm guessing it doesn't need to be very big?

Thanks

[bigpup]

300 to 500 MB is all it needs.

All you want to do is put the boot loader files on this first partition.

Grub4dos Boot loader does need the drive to have an mbr. (it should refuse to install if there is no mbr)

When you run the Grug4dos Config program.
Select this small first partition as location to install Grub4dos.
When asked about putting stuff on the mbr, say yes.

[bigpup]

What exact version of Puppy Linux you trying to use??????

[stevie pup]

I've tried Bionic32 and Fossa so far. If I can get it sorted I would prefer to use Bionic32, for the simple reason the original point of having it on an external drive was to have something universal. If I use Fossa then being 64 bit only it won't be universal. So going forward I intend to concentrate my efforts on Bionic.

Hopefully I'll make some progress over the weekend.

[greengeek]

If I go down this route what size should I make this first partition? I'm guessing it doesn't need to be very big?

True, it doesn't need to be very big. But i habitually make it about 8GB when i set up this sort of portable drive. That way it gives me a partition i can use to store any large video file that i may want to transfer onto a Windows machine. Windows cant see any EXT3 partition so it is handy to have a good sized fat32 space for swapping files between different operating systems.

[wizard]

@stevie pup

Have a Dell 6430 laptop. Here's what worked for me.
-set all bios settings for legacy
-booted Friendly Bionic32 from USB viewtopic.php?t=5188
-attach 320gb USB sata hdd
-gparted format ext3 & set boot flag
-use Frugalpup to install Puppy files to USB hdd
-use Grub2 bootloader config to install grub to USB hdd
-reboot, press F12 for boot menu
-select USB hdd

Boots into Bionic32.

If your laptop has both USB2 & 3 ports, try booting from both to see if it makes a difference.

wizard

[wizard]

@stevie pup
Could not find that you have listed the make and model of your computer, but think that would help.

Did some testing on laptops available to me:

External sata hdd, ext3, boot flag set.
Dell e6430 = ok
Dell d630 = ok
Dell Vostro 3750 = no, drive did not show in boot menu
Thinkpad T41 = no, drive did not show in boot menu

w/Added empty fat32 partition to end of USB hdd.
Dell Vostro 3750 = ok
HP g60 = no, boots to blinking cursor, no grub menu
Thinkpad T41 = no, drive did not show in boot menu

Also tried a HP dv9500, but it would not boot at all with the USB hdd connected, suggesting a power issue.

All of these laptops will boot from a USB flash.

This suggest that it is related to the computer's bios ability to recognize the USB hdd as a bootable device.

wizard

[mikewalsh]

@wizard :-

Ah. A-ha. Yes. A light is beginning to dawn.....and the grey matter is beginning to stir.

Related (kind of) to my post about the USB 3.0 boot issues I had on the old Compaq, shortly after that - I would guess within the following 12-month period - I started getting issues even trying to boot from USB flash drives.

Older flash drives from a few years previous still booted fine. But any new purchases would flat-out refuse to boot, claiming that there was nothing there TO boot from.

A bit of research revealed I wasn't the only one with this problem. It turns out that most manufacturers of flash drives were switching over to a new generation of controller chips.....which were set-up to see USB flash drives as USB HDDs instead. But to get these seen as a flash drive, the general recommendation was to update the BIOS. The older BIOS was incapable of interacting correctly with the modern controller chip's "interpretation" of what was attached to the system.

At that point in time, the final BIOS update for the Compaq's mobo was already 12 years in the past. So for then, I soldiered on with my older flash drives, which fortunately proved to be pretty reliable & long-lasting.

Mike.

[wizard]

@mikewalsh

Yeah, with the older hardware there's no standard for how the bios recognizes USB's, it's "iffy". Sometimes you can reset a USB flash's "removable bit" so it is seen as either a flash or a hdd. Lexar has a MS Windows utility called Bootit that would do it. Sometimes you could add the utility "Plop" to the internal hdd grub menu and it would work. I have a couple of old P4 and AMD single core laptops that the bios doesn't support USB boot and PLop works on them.

It's the price of progress and lack of standards.

Thanks
wizard

[stevie pup]

This is just a quick update as I'm a little pushed for time at the moment. The first thing I did at the weekend was to look through my collection of USB sticks to see what other distro's I'd still got. Found one with Manjaro on it, so plugged that in and booted it up. Installed it to same external drive, shut down and unplugged everything. Plugged just the drive back in, pressed the button and voila, Manjaro booted up straight away, no problems whatsoever.

Now to me this proves that a) there's nothing wrong with the drive, and b) there is nothing wrong with the BIOS or BIOS settings. I have also installed Bionic to an internal drive, and that worked without issue as well, so I like to think I'm capable of making the right settings in Grub4Dos. For interest the two laptops I usually use for my experiments are a Dell 1545 and an Acer 5735, both from 2009. All USB ports are USB 2.0 and all my drives are USB 2.0.

The only other time I've had an issue like this was last year with Antix. Booted up fine from USB and booted fine when installed, but couldn't get it to boot from external HD. Thing with this was that I didn't even get an error message, just a flashing cursor in top left of screen, so there wasn't much to go on.

All other distro's I've installed to an external HD, and there's been a few, it's been without problems. Fingers crossed further update tomorrow.

[greengeek]

Can you use Gparted to have a look at the hdd partition format now that Manjaro is on it? Is it still ext3 or has the Manjaro install routine made any changes?

[stevie pup]

Can you use Gparted to have a look at the hdd partition format now that Manjaro is on it? Is it still ext3 or has the Manjaro install routine made any changes?

Sorry but I had already wiped it before I read your message, but from memory I believe it formats it EXT4, and I think most Linux distros do but could be wrong on that point. Besides, when I installed Bionic to an internal drive I formatted it EXT3, and there weren't any problems. Now on to my update.

So, back to the beginning. I boot Bionic32 from the USB stick then plug in the external HD, and almost instantly the icon appears on the screen, SDD1. I can open the drive to look at what’s on it, and I can copy and paste items to Bionic, and also from Bionic back to the HD, without issue. Then I go into Gparted, where I can format it, make new partitions, set flags, do whatever I want. I’m not going to get the drives mixed up as in addition to the SDD label the external drive is a completely different size to the internal drive and the USB stick.

I think at this point we can all agree the drive has most definitely been recognised by Bionic. I then format the drive EXT3 and set the boot flag. Then I go to menu – setup – Puppy installer, and on next screen I click on Universal installer. On the next screen I click on the second box down, USB hard drive, and promptly get an error message which says “Nothing to choose. If a plugin device, did you plug it in?”

Back to plan b. Created new directory on the drive, and copied all contents of ISO file into it. Then ran Grub4Dos, again ensuring I picked correct drive. Shut down, unplugged everything, plugged the external drive back in, and pressed the button. Same result as before, no Grub screen, just an error message that says “Missing Operating System”.

On to plan c. Created small partition at start of drive and formatted Fat32, then formatted rest of drive EXT3. Again created directory with contents of ISO file. Ran Grub4Dos again, then shut down. Attempted to boot it back up, but this time got an error message saying “This is not a bootable device”!

I am now at a complete loss as to what is going wrong. Anyway, I’ve spent far more time on this than I originally intended, so for the time being at least I will continue to use my YUMI set up. Which took all of 10 minutes, and is also on an external HD, not a USB stick, but has never failed to boot anything.

On a final note, I can’t help thinking this sort of thing is likely to scare some people away, such as someone that has just come from Windows and is new to Linux generally. Expecting them to start messing around with Gparted and such like just to install to an internal drive, I think some of them would run a mile.

[greengeek]

Your frustration is understandable. The message "is not a bootable device" does offer scope for further investigation.

Are you willing to troubleshoot further?

There are many hardware/software interactions that affect booting.

You are getting closer to a solution - if you don't mind checking a couple more things?