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I have a question here - how to create a portable Ubuntu 23.10 system that I can just install on my 500GB external HDD, and then plug that HDD anywhere and I'm good to go? I searched the web, found tutorials, they didn't work - but I have some knowledge and information about this that I have tried but it failed.

What I tried:

  • Flashing my Ubuntu ISO on my external HDD using etcher
  • Triggering the installer on an old laptop
  • Selecting the external HDD as my install drive (adding the bootloader, 16GB swap space and the rest as root with the / being defined as a boot point (or root point idk)

It ended with a "installation failed".

What should I do in order to make a plug-and-use portable system where changes will persist and it will act the same as if I had installed it on a standard built-in drive inside a computer?

Thanks for all information?

Renegade
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  • A full 23.10 install to your external disk should work on any machine with compatible hardware (maybe such limited portability is not what you want). A persistent install (use mkusb) will be more portable, but that might not be a good long term solution as filespace management is not like the full install. Did you hashcheck the downloaded ISO? Try making the install media on a separate USB stick, don't put it on the final device, effort was put into the insatller to prevent that common error. – ubfan1 Oct 20 '23 at 15:59
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    Better to use external SSD. Some systems may not support HDD if USB powered. UEFI or BIOS system? I was able to add BIOS boot stanza to internal drive to boot UEFI Kubuntu bootable install on SSD. Surprised it worked as well as it did on very old system. You need to gpt partition in advance and if UEFI install grub after install, if UEFI and 22.04 or before or some flavors that use Ubiquity installer. See this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1396379 & https://askubuntu.com/questions/16988/how-do-i-install-ubuntu-to-a-usb-key-without-using-startup-disk-creator – oldfred Oct 20 '23 at 19:21
  • @ubfan1 I tried putting it on a separate USB - same error. – Renegade Oct 21 '23 at 19:14

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