i have a hp pavilion dv2000 laptop running windows vista ultimate and i have a western digital external hard drive the one in the picture below its 150gb and i want to install one of the linux versions(havent decided wich yet) onto it and boot it from the external ive read its possible is it possible to make it boot linux when my eh is plugged in when starting the computer and make it boot vista when its not i changed my boot order on my laptop to cd/dvd, usb hardrive,mainhardrive (forgot what it was called) then i left everything after the same my computer recognized my hd as a boot device its just theres nothing to boot so any help appreciated on installing the os guides would be most appreciated
As long as your BIOS is recognizing it as a valid thing to boot off of which it appears to do it should work as you plan. It should just behave like a regular hard drive, you'll just need to be able to identify it when it asks where to install to. Installation should be completely bog standard, any guide that applies to a normal install should behave identically. Just follow the normal install procedure supplied with whichever distro you settle with.
thanks i have one more question ive decided on the ubuntu 8.04 and my laptop is an amd 64 do i download the amd 64 one and install that onto my hardrive or a different version
Take your pick..the i386 and x86_64 versions should both work just fine. the 64bit version may be a little buggy.. I don't follow ubuntu development. What I would suggest is running the live 386 cd version first and making a list of all the hardware that is detected.. just in case it doesn't work from an external drive as we are expecting. I think that any benefits from running a 64bit OS will be negated by the usb nature of the installation.. and there may be trouble when it boots up because of possible missing usb drivers or something like it. Don't know what will happen until you install it.. so have fun with the partitioner... make sure you chose the manual option, or the automatic will likely blank your internal drive as it will try to install to the first drive it sees. The usb drive will be /dev/sda (possibly.. depends if the lappy has sata drives internally)
