I have a Dell Dimension 4500S with Intel Pentium 4, 1.70GHz,250 Mo
RAM. OS Windows XP and Service Pack 2.I bought an external Iomega HDD
of 160GB hoping to run a Linux OS from it.I have contacted Iomega who
say that they do not recommend using their disk for this purpose. I
know that it is possible to partition my internal hard drive and run
Linux there but would prefer to keep the two O.S. quite separate.Have heard of
something called "Migrate Easy" - would you recommend this (I think
it's made by Acronis?) Any suggestions as to how I could run Linux
from the external HDD will be welcome.

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Clarification of Question by mar100-ga on 11 Jun 2005 14:22 PDT

Thanks to termina-ga. My external HDD doesn't show on my bios. So am I stuck?
Contacted Dell who made my computer and they wash their hands of it.

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Clarification of Question by mar100-ga on 01 Jul 2005 03:13 PDT

Thankyou imkizersoze-ga  I'll give it a go!

Hi,

You can Install ubuntu, mepis (linux flavours) on your preferred HDD
and install the boot loader (Grub) in your primary HDD.

I guess this helps. 

Good Luck !

I would be more inclined to get a couple of disk caddies.

Basically put your hard disks inside carriers that can be pushed into a slot.

That way they are completely separate.

I only have one external hard drive. My main question is whether I CAN
install safely a linux O.S. on the Iomega. The cd's that I have for
install

I only have one external hard drive. My main question is whether I CAN
install safely a linux O.S. on the Iomega. The cd's that I have for
installing linux don't give me the choice to install anywhere except
on my internal hard drive which I don't want to do. How can I get my
computer to offer the Iomega external HDD as a place to install?
Any help will be appreciated!
Thanks

1) Take the external hard drive and chuck it in a lake
2) Purchase two drive caddies
3) Purchase one new hard disk

You will then have the equivalent of two computers

OK so I should have asked the question before buying but I do now have
(and it cost me!) an Iomega HDD 160GB external drive. Why should I
throw it in the lake?Is it really useless for an  O.S. whatever?

Ignore them.

Yes, you can install linux on a USB drive. During the linux install,
it should be detected as a regular drive and you can partition it (or
have the install do it for you).

You will need to set USB HDD to first boot device in BIOS though, in
order for it to boot. If your BIOS should support this.

It is never reccomended to run an OS on an external drive. Partition
Magic is a program that you can use to split the drive. Then on the
unparticioned space you can install Linux. This is exactly what I did
and it works great. The computer boots with a Linux menu asking which
OS I would like to boot into. If i dont answer in 5 seconds, it boots
windows by default. For Linux, I suggest Fedora, the KDE is a great
way to start learning Linux.

Note: that once split, you will not be able to merge the partitions
back together. I lost 100 GB of data trying that one :(