Installing Fedora 7 on an External Drive

2007-09-27 tutorial

I'll start off by saying that by following these instructions, you are proceeding at your own risk. I cannot be held accountable if for some reason your processor generates a quantum event leading to the ex-nihilo creation of an aardvark in the room with you. That said, I have done everything in my power to ensure that this won't break anything, and that further, it works. The hard part is going to be installing the OS. Everything should be a downhill race from there.

Before starting, I would recommend printing these instructions off or viewing them on a different computer than the one you are attempting to install Fedora on.

I'm going to assume that you have a working Fedora installation dvd/cd (I really don't know what it is, and it doesn't matter much.) I can troubleshoot problems with that separately, and intend to address it in a separate tutorial to be available on this site relatively soon.

To begin with, I highly recommend powering down your computer, removing the case side, and unplugging your Windows hard drive from the power supply. If it doesn't have power, you can't install over it, and therefore can't break your Windows install. You won't need to put the case side back on (unless you have a cat that likes to stick her nose in fans) until after you've successfully installed and booted Fedora, at which point you can plug the Windows drive back in and reinstall the case side.

Next, plug your external hard drive into the computer and turn it on. You'll want to have the Fedora dvd in the dvd drive at this point. Your computer SHOULD boot into the Fedora installer menu (I can't vouch for this, but it sounds reasonable.) The process for installing Fedora 7 is detailed at this site and I really don't think I can improve on it any, since I haven't actually installed Fedora before. Heck, I've barely RUN Fedora. Doesn't matter.

Once the install is finished, you have the option to remove the cd and reboot into Fedora on your hard drive. Give it a try. If it succeeds, that's gotta be the coolest thing ever. If it fails, then never fear! This is to be expected. Turn the machine off, and plug the Windows hard drive back in. You can also put the case side back on, and finally boot up into Windows.

This is the part where I depart from my normal methods for the sake of simplicity. I would normally advise you to use a Linux live-cd for the next step, but it appears that there is a Windows utility which will save me a lot of work, and therefore you a lot of work. It's called Bootpart, and you can get it for absolutely free. Simply extract it, and open a command line by going to Start > Run and typing cmd, then pressing Enter. Type bootpart, then press Enter, and look at what is displayed. It should give you a listing of the partitions it can see. Look for one that contains "type=83". The first number in that line tells you which partition Fedora rests on. I'll call that number x. Now, you just type bootpart x FEDORA.LNX Fedora 7 and it should fix boot.ini for you. Reboot your computer, and you should be presented with a menu giving you the choice to boot either Windows or Fedora 7. Choose Fedora 7, and you should soon be looking at a Fedora desktop. Congratulations! You are victorious.

Comments:

No comments added yet for this post.

Leave blank: