Q4OS Forum

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Greetings men

Only tried this once - what an unmitigated disaster - do not want a repeat - no google installs, puleez

Would like to preserve the existing data on said drive also - need to adjust partitions, etc

A 20Gig partition should suffice - need existing HDD to function normally - the acid test from hell

No need to drag NB/WS around as we have them everywhere - thought of a stick, I would lose it

All input most welcome

Regards

Jack

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Not too sure what you are asking...
Do you want to have Q4OS installed on an external HDD to be able to plugin (and boot) when needed? And if so do you need the original install or do you want a fresh one?

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Hai Dai

Thank you for your interest - would like to install a fresh copy of Q4O/S on an external WD USB HDD, whilst preserving
all the existing data on that drive - never even gave a 'mirror' install a thought - might be exciting too - I did try it many
moons ago - never succeeded for a myriad of reasons - over to you, my friend

Regards

Jack

Not too sure what you are asking...
Do you want to have Q4OS installed on an external HDD to be able to plugin (and boot) when needed? And if so do you need the original install or do you want a fresh one?

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

OK, First thing to note is whether you have a UEFI system or BIOS one, there are major defferences when trying to boot external media, for the sake of simplicity I will give some guidance for BIOS systems and although it is possible to do most of the following with UEFI it will remain a boot option on your system even when it is not connected, and cannot be used in a non-UEFI system (without further modification) or any other UEFI machine (again without further modifications).

Assumptions
1) system boots in BIOS (MBR) mode.
2) system will contain it's own boot-loader (grub)
3) you have a backup of your data in case you (or I) make a mistake.

So you start by booting your machine into a live session, once you are running make sure your external drive is connected and recognised.

Perform a "normal" install but when you get to the partition options make sure nothing is selected from the main hdd of the machine, now select the external hdd and create a swap partition (according to your preferences) and then a working partition (for more experienced users wanting separate home/user partitions etc this can be done in the normal manner) At this point you can resize your existing partitions to make space for them and retain your old data SEE POINT 3 OF ASSUMPTIONS!!!

After this in the installation process you are given the option of where to install grub, make sure you select your external device here otherwise it will only boot on this system and your other OS's will not boot without the external device connected. I cannot give you exact device names but you must be sure you are using the correct one something like /dev/sdX where X is the device ID letter (a, b, c or more) Do not use the partition ID which would be shown as /dev/sdXx with the x being the partition identifier (1, 2, 3 etc...) This is very important as you want grub to boot this disk and it must be the device ID and not the partition ID.

Next in the installation you will be shown a summary of operations that will be performed, check this list to make sure everything is ok before you continue, this is probably the most important step as it is your last chance to avoid disaster if you have selected the wrong partition or other problem. Once you confirm this page your system will be adjusted to your chosen partitions and installation will begin.

Once the installation has finished you will be asked if you want to boot into your new system, you can answer yes and when the system boots you will need to either press F12 (usually) to get a boot menu to select the partition to boot from, or depending on how your BIOS settings are, you might just boot the external device first.

This is usually all you will need to do and could be simplified a little by disconnecting the machines HDD and using the external HDD as the main drive and then perform a completely normal installation, but sometimes (especially with laptops) this may more difficult.

Let us know if these instructions are enough to get you running and if so I will add it (with maybe more detail and images) to my tutorials and guides site.

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Greetings Dai et al,

Some of yesterday's soap opera was due to me playing with USB/mount/umount in clean/moving data around

Those issues still persist in Mint today - deleted yesterday's distro also - what a nothing burger - except trouble
Its installer crashed on me - twice -  which probably was the root cause of its inability to complete the install

Carved-out 100Gig chunk of 3TB USB HDD for the O/S - decided to install my trusty flash-card 330MB TDE ISO
Installer recognized all the drives/partitions, and we were good to go - might revisit swap soon [suggestions?]

The installation time was say 4x faster than on my 500Gig HDD - screamed thru it - it also boots much faster

Must be a monster 6TB cache or pipe we dont know about somewhere - I have always attempted these on
pretty clapped-out, tiny, old HDD - they just simply never worked - this drive is a virgin, never seen active duty

She rebooted cleanly ... everything works, all partitions are there/intact - wonderful - gonna build this baby to
be my #1 O/S - it sure looks good from this grassy knoll - will be able to slice & dice my 500GB HDD - maybe
simply install the O/S's to virgin real estate at the end of the drive, which is untouched - more updates soonest

Movie @ eleven

Regards

Jack

Assumptions
1) system boots in BIOS (MBR) mode.
2) system will contain it's own boot-loader (grub)
3) you have a backup of your data in case you (or I) make a mistake.

PS - never assume anything ... lol

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

might revisit swap soon [suggestions?]

what do you want suggestions on?
whether to have one or not? how big? something else?

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Greetings all.

The O/S turf-battle continues - believe-you-me - its pretty intense doing all the pushups on a live system,
without trashing anything, or going thru the dreaded grub edit wars - which could get real messy with all
these HDD's Partitions, multiple O/S's, different file systems, et al .... a huge amount of credit has to go
to the devs @ Q4O/S HQ - their installer is just bullet-proof and it simply works - the bogus distro that I
just dumped could not even read my partition tables properly, crashed the installation several times,
and then would not even boot up the following day .... terrible fall from grace ... be gone

Have now successfully rebuilt all the O/S on the 'bad' HDD .... all the bad blocks were in the front-end
of the HDD .... which crashed with every lightening strike & power outage here - which makes more
sense than frying everybody, also no battery did not help ... ran checks all night on the last 80% of the
drive, and then reformatted the HDD several times using different FS protocols, ran stress & means
tests - can report zero bad blocks, zero bad clusters - looking real good - have setup main O/S to run
in the last  20% of that 'bad' HHD - just cleaning up now .... writing this on main HDD O/S now - have
retained the USB HDD O/S in case everything goes pear-shaped like before .... a lot of intense work
to keep everything running, without blowing anything up, no dreaded 'BSD'  ... lol ... really dont need
all those different experimental O/S's any more - slimmed-down to four O/S's ... for production only

Regards

Jack

might revisit swap soon [suggestions?]

what do you want suggestions on?
whether to have one or not? how big? something else?

Thinking outside the box - when WD Q4O/S boots-up on a strange system, only to find its swap is AWOL

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

If you have a swap partition on the WD HDD and have it set in fstab correctly it should find it no matter which system you boot from.Be sure to use the UUID's for your fstab entries and it will find them.

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Hey ...

Nope - the original its on the NB HDD- dont feel like more manipulations
Might simply be easier to setup a bespoke swap for the WD HDD to use

Regards

Jack

If you have a swap partition on the WD HDD and have it set in fstab correctly it should find it no matter which system you boot from.Be sure to use the UUID's for your fstab entries and it will find them.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Hey ...

Nope - the original its on the NB HDD- dont feel like more manipulations
Might simply be easier to setup a bespoke swap for the WD HDD to use

Regards

Jack

If you have a swap partition on the WD HDD and have it set in fstab correctly it should find it no matter which system you boot from.Be sure to use the UUID's for your fstab entries and it will find them.

And you will be back to this again...

Thinking outside the box - when WD Q4O/S boots-up on a strange system, only to find its swap is AWOL

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Yes, but only when the NB HHD boots with the WD HDD AWOL ....

Regards

Jack

Hey ...

Nope - the original its on the NB HDD- dont feel like more manipulations
Might simply be easier to setup a bespoke swap for the WD HDD to use

Regards

Jack

If you have a swap partition on the WD HDD and have it set in fstab correctly it should find it no matter which system you boot from.Be sure to use the UUID's for your fstab entries and it will find them.

And you will be back to this again...

Thinking outside the box - when WD Q4O/S boots-up on a strange system, only to find its swap is AWOL

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Greetings ..

An interesting conundrum - using the exact same protocols - the one O/S is > 0.8Gig than its identical younger sibling
SG NB HDD - 3.27Gig
WD USB HDD - 2.46Gig
Both measured by KDE Partition Manager

Comments?

Regards

Jack

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

You could install ncdu into a live session (or from another installation) and run two instances side by side and compare the different values for directory sizes until you find where the extra Mb's/Gb's have gone.

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Hi there

According to Dolphin, both O/S's are the same size - ergo 1.1Gig each, both have 45,876 directories, und both
have 5,227 sub folders - even after refreshes - side-by-side - somebody is lying

Regards

Jack

You could install ncdu into a live session (or from another installation) and run two instances side by side and compare the different values for directory sizes until you find where the extra Mb's/Gb's have gone.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,989

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Hi there

According to Dolphin, both O/S's are the same size - ergo 1.1Gig each, both have 45,876 directories, und both
have 5,227 sub folders - even after refreshes - side-by-side - somebody is lying

Regards

Jack

You could install ncdu into a live session (or from another installation) and run two instances side by side and compare the different values for directory sizes until you find where the extra Mb's/Gb's have gone.

I'm guessing you measured one of the systems (probably SG NB HDD - 3.27Gig) while it was running and the other system was dormant, therefore it reported different sizes, alternatively KDE Partition Manager could be the one "lying" as that is where your mismatch data came from.

jackdanielsesq

Member

From: Phuket

Registered: 2017-12-19

Posts: 149

Re: Q4O/S on WD USB HDD

Nope - aint that dumb, but working on it

Jack

Hi there

According to Dolphin, both O/S's are the same size - ergo 1.1Gig each, both have 45,876 directories, und both
have 5,227 sub folders - even after refreshes - side-by-side - somebody is lying

Regards

Jack

You could install ncdu into a live session (or from another installation) and run two instances side by side and compare the different values for directory sizes until you find where the extra Mb's/Gb's have gone.

I'm guessing you measured one of the systems (probably SG NB HDD - 3.27Gig) while it was running and the other system was dormant, therefore it reported different sizes, alternatively KDE Partition Manager could be the one "lying" as that is where your mismatch data came from.