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)
