How to install to external hard drive?

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How to install to external hard drive?

Postby android on Wed May 02, 2012 2:36 am

My hard drive does not show up under /dev/sdb/ to manually partition and install under the 'something else' option.

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Re: How to install to external hard drive?

Postby DataMan on Wed May 02, 2012 5:31 am

You might want to try running GParted from a cold bootup - LiveCD (i.e. not running it from within an operating system). That's the way I always do the initial formatting of new hard drives.

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Re: How to install to external hard drive?

Postby mintybits on Wed May 02, 2012 6:31 am

Does the external hard drive show up when you open a terminal and type:
sudo fdisk -lu

If so, check its name and any warning messages. How big is the disk and does it have MBR format already? I have seen the installer get confused by disks that contain Windows raid artefacts or GPT format.

If the drive doesn't show up then check cables, power.
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Re: How to install to external hard drive?

Postby android on Wed May 02, 2012 1:41 pm

DataMan wrote:You might want to try running GParted from a cold bootup - LiveCD (i.e. not running it from within an operating system). That's the way I always do the initial formatting of new hard drives.

-DataMan


Alright, I'll try that out -- thanks.

mintybits wrote:Does the external hard drive show up when you open a terminal and type:
sudo fdisk -lu

If so, check its name and any warning messages. How big is the disk and does it have MBR format already? I have seen the installer get confused by disks that contain Windows raid artefacts or GPT format.

If the drive doesn't show up then check cables, power.


The disk is a terrabyte and no it doesn't have mbr format. I'll try out your troubleshooting if gparted doesn't work out. Thanks.
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Re: How to install to external hard drive?

Postby android on Wed May 02, 2012 4:09 pm

Ok, gparted worked. I burned it to a dvd, formatted my terrabyte external with ext4, manually created 4 partitions, and installed it. Thanks guys!
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