- #Installing grub on usb drive install#
- #Installing grub on usb drive update#
- #Installing grub on usb drive portable#
The Linux USB may not work with systems with secure boot enabled.Ībout the slower experience with Linux on USB, if your system has a thunderbolt port, I advise getting a thunderbolt SSD. When you want to use the Linux USB on a system, you’ll have to go to the boot settings to boot from the USB (unless the system is set to boot from USB by default). Using a Linux system from USB will always be slower than actual hard disk and SSD. Even if you use USB 3, installing Linux will be multiple fold slower than normal Ubuntu installation. USB 2.0 will be painfully slow for both installing and using Linux. I highly recommend using USB 3.0 for both live USB and the actual Linux USB. Use a USB of 4 GB for the live system and at least a 32 GB USB for the Linux USB. One for live USB and another one where Linux will be installed. Let me clear a few more doubts and add some suggestions: The original ESP partition on the hard disk is untouched.Ĭlever trick, I know. This way, you fool the Ubuntu installer into thinking that there is no existing ESP partition and it will create and use a new ESP partition on the USB. Removing the disk is out of question here.Īn easier way out is to remove the ESP flag from the ESP partition before installing Linux on the USB and put it back after installation. If you have a desktop PC, you may remove the hard disk and that could solve the problem but things will be difficult when it is a laptop. The solution or workaround to the bootloader problem is that you do not let the installer know that there is already an ESP partition. Things to know before installing Linux on a USB I’ll share a neat trick for installing Ubuntu or other Linux distributions on a USB without messing up with the bootloader of the host system and the system on the USB.īefore you start following the tutorial, read it entirely and then go about doing it on your system. #Installing grub on usb drive portable#
This fails the entire idea of having a portable Linux USB, right?
#Installing grub on usb drive install#
The Linux USB you created won’t boot on other systems because its EFI files are on the ESP partitions of the system which was used to install Linux on USB.The system you used for installing Linux on USB may not boot and end up with grub error if you don’t have the Linux USB plugged in.
#Installing grub on usb drive update#
This means that the Linux installed on the external USB will be the last one to update and control the bootloader. Even if you choose to install bootloader on the external USB, it doesn’t work if hard disk already has an ESP partition While installing Linux, even if you choose the USB as the destination for bootloader, the existing ESP partition is still used for placing the EFI file for the new distribution. A system can only have one active ESP partition at a time and it causes issues. The one major problem with this setup is bootloader installation on UEFI systems. The available tutorials on the internet miss the most crucial part: the bootloader.