Multiple flavors, one external hard drive?

Question

I got a 1TB HDD, is it possible to partition it in say 128GB sections and install a different Linux in each (i.e 8 different flavors on 1 hard drive) and be able to carry it around?

If so, what are the steps?

Answer 1

First off, since you want to install eight different flavors, it would be good practice to create 8 partitions with 124 GB each and use the remaining 8 GB as a SWAP partition.

Here there is also a decision to be made about the kind of Partition table structure to implement. If the flavors of Linux that you are opting to install have the support for it and the hardware you are running has support for UEFI (Universal Extended Firmware Interface), you should use a GPT partition table structure but, if you are planning on running the systems on older machines that implement MBR(MSDOS)-BIOS, then you should create three Primary partitions and one extended partition where the remaining five flavors of linux and the SWAP partition can reside in.

Both the creation of the Partition table, the partitions and later the file-systems on each partition, can be done with gparted which can be downloaded from here or it's highly likely that one of the linux boxes you are running has already got the program installed.

gparted is a GUI tool, so using it is a fairly straightforward process and you can very easily learn how to do each task i.e. creating a GPT or MBR partition table, creating the 9 partitions and file-systems on the partitions you just created from videos on YouTube.

To start you off, here is my favorite article on creating a GPT partition structure in gparted. And here is one for manipulating MBR/MSDOS primary and secondary partitions in gparted .

Answer 2

I would create partitions for each of the linux distros, that you want to try, plus one common swap partition plus one common data partition. The data partition is where you can store your personal files including documents, pictures, videoclips, music.

• It is enough with 40-50 GB for each of the linux distros.
• If you want hibernation you should have at least as much swap as RAM in the same units GiB (gibibytes), base 2 (while GB (gigabytes) uses base 10). Otherwise it is probably enough with 1 or 2 GB swap. If the computer starts swapping it will be very slow. You don't want your systems to swap (except for emergency swapping to avoid a program crash).
• The data partition can become the biggest one, around half of the drive space.
  • If you intend to share data with Windows, use the file system NTFS and let it be partition number one. It can still be located physically at the end of drive space. (The number in the partition table decides if it will be seen by Windows when connected via USB.)
  • If you intend to share data with MacOS, use the file system FAT32.
  • If you intend to use the data partition only with linux, use a linux file system. I suggest ext4.

See the following link and links from it for more details about installed systems in USB drives.

• Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) before installing it

• Please notice that you might use an external case with USB 3 as well as eSATA connections.

• You need not worry about wear with a USB hard disk drive, so you need no tweaks to reduce wear (for example, keep journaling, it makes the file system more stable).