USB main Drive and SATA XP

[Guest]

Hi.

I'm choosing my Linux distribution to get rid of Windows XP. For that purpose I've been testing various Linux distributions (10 + -), and Linux Mint had become my favorite.

I have a Lenovo T60 notebook who has a SATA main drive, until now with Windows XP and my personal documents. For Linux distribution testing I use a external USB IDE drive in wich i use to install and boot the current distro. So I can have XP drive intact.

To each installation I remove laptop's SATA XP drive, boot from Linux CD/DVD and install the Linux distro in the USB IDE drive by taking the whole disk. After downloading and updating I used to connect again SATA drive to see if its easy detected and mounted and then to work with my files and test the distribution for a couple of days.

I've tested many distros (Suse 10.3, Fedora 8 and 9b, PCLinux 2007, Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04b, Dreamlinux 3, Open Geu, etc.) without a fault by doing this.

I've installed Linux Mint 4 Daryna on the USB IDE drive, updated, and after connect laptop's SATA drive and booting from USB IDE drive again, the boot process stopped at start and Busybox v1.1.3 command line appeared with (INITRAMFS), ATTACHED SCSI GENERIC SG2 TYPE 0 message, and i can't do anything from there. Tried Recovery Mode too, and the same.

I think that is a Grub related problem. ¿Can somebody give me some help to boot properly form USB drive with SATA drive connected at the same time?...

Thanks in advance.
VoivoD

[Husse]

I'm not so sure it's grub related, rather BIOS related.
The BIOS in laptops generally don't give you many options, but check that it's set at booting USB
Or it really is a grub thing - you may need to have grub on the internal disk
Se the wiki for that
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _your_grub
There's no risk with this - you just write to the hard disk

[Fred]

Guest,

I salute you on the sane way you are going about deciding on a replacement for XP. I have a favor to ask. If you find a distro that you like better than Mint as a replacement for XP, would you please post back to this thread and tell me what it is.

I am not a Windows user, and haven't been for quite a few years. I am also not a so-called Mint fan boy, member of the Mint team, or affiliated with Mint in any way. I am, however, in a position to select Linux distros for people from time to time that are considering the possibility of switching from Windows to Linux.

I have just become acquainted with Mint in the last few months, and have been favorably impressed, with both the distro and the support forum. I used to install and recommend Ubuntu and Kubuntu, but I have since begun to recommend Mint, the Gnome and KDE versions. Mint seems to have gone to a lot of effort to make a distribution geared to make the transition as easy as possible without sacrificing the power and flexibility of Linux. I think they have made some good choices.

Not being a Windows user, my perspective is somewhat different from that of a Windows user, hence my request of your final opinion.

Fred

[Husse]

And I'm happy with the calm way you seem to have fixed this
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