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I know that there are many sources available online regarding the installation of a bootable Ubuntu on an external HDD. Many of them are difficult to translate for the computer-technical illiterate such as myself. My goal is to partition a 160GB storage device that I had lying around and I would like to install a bootable for kali linux, ubuntu, and mint, but also allocate some space on the drive that will allow me to save information -- which I guess is known as a live or persistent.

  1. Do I partition the HDD before using the Linux USB Loader program to create the live boot file? What should be the size for each of the 3 partitions?

  2. Is the .iso file saved on a separate partition than the profile/settings that I wish to maintain as the "persistent" data?

  3. Are there any hazards or limitations to installing multiple bootables on one drive?

This is the allocated HDD from the terminal:

/dev/disk4s2
/dev/disk4s3
/dev/disk4s4
/dev/disk4s5

Would the install command be grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/disk4s? If not, please explain why it is not.

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  • If doing a full install, that will install grub to MBR, but you have to use Something Else to make sure grub is installed to sdb or whatever external drive is. See third or if you have blank disk for details: askubuntu.com/questions/343268/… And you want this screen to choose where to install the grub2 boot loader which is only available with Something Else or manual install help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/…:
    – oldfred
    Mar 23, 2016 at 23:02

2 Answers 2

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  1. Essentially you will create 4 EXT4 partitions, 3 for your 3 distributions and 1 for data, commonly accessed by all 3. Use that data partition as /home for all 3, and install grub on MBR

  2. You are not saving any iso, you are actually installing them as on internal hdd

  3. Kindly ensure that, the ext hdd case has sufficient ventilation, to avoid disk wear and tear real fast

All you need are the iso live disks and install normally as you install Linux, selecting the correct hdd.

In case you want just multi bootable installation images, then you may use Yumi from http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

Hope it helps

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  • Thanks Arijit, for clarifying everything for me. I didn't want to have to do this more than once. What should be the size of the 3 partitions?
    – wellington
    Mar 21, 2016 at 18:12
  • Ideally Ubuntu and Mint will be happy with 30GB each, Kali wants more, maybe 35-40GB, rest is your data. Regards
    – Arijit Chatterjee
    Mar 21, 2016 at 18:23
  • Will the 30-40GB partition maintain my user profile? So that each time I boot up one of the OS's it will pick up where I left off? The reason I ask is because when I previously used Ubuntu on a thumb drive, it was always a fresh boot and didn't store any files that I would try to save.
    – wellington
    Mar 21, 2016 at 19:54
  • That is the difference between a full install and a live installer in live mode. Even with persistence on the live installer only some data can be saved. Is system BIOS/MBR or UEFI/gpt? With grub on drive you also can directly boot ISO which is another live installer. If BIOS and you just want ISO: askubuntu.com/questions/388382/…
    – oldfred
    Mar 21, 2016 at 21:47
  • If I wanted to do a full install, one that would save all my data so that it would perform the same way any normal desktop does, what would I need to do? Do I need to setup grub on my external hdd?
    – wellington
    Mar 22, 2016 at 2:02
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Document all that you do, because it may very well blow up, as it did for me. You will likely have to do it all over again. Or, you may want to buy a bigger hard drive and repeat the entire process. Document it!

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