Install Operating System on a USB Flash Drive

[DrBoo1Ghost]

I am currently running Windows 7 off of my 2x Western Digital 1TB Black RAID 0 hard drive. I also want to be able to boot Linux Ubuntu. I have a 16 GB USB flash drive. Is it possible to install the Linux operating system on the flash drive, boot from there, but also be able to access the RAID volume with the Windows files from the Linux operating system? Thanks in advance!

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there DrBoo1Ghost.
I have never tried it personally, but you're a few steps away from finding out. Check out this link: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows. Follow the steps, you won't need a USB flash drive larger than 2GB, but if you don't have another one, yours will do just fine. After you've created the Linux Live USB flash drive (this is basically a freeware, portable, bootable version of Linux), go to your BIOS and set up the flash drive as your first boot device so that you can boot from it. This will make your computer boot to Linux and you can try accessing the files from your RAID configuration without even installing the OS.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[DrBoo1Ghost]

Hey there DrBoo1Ghost.
I have never tried it personally, but you're a few steps away from finding out. Check out this link: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows. Follow the steps, you won't need a USB flash drive larger than 2GB, but if you don't have another one, yours will do just fine. After you've created the Linux Live USB flash drive (this is basically a freeware, portable, bootable version of Linux), go to your BIOS and set up the flash drive as your first boot device so that you can boot from it. This will make your computer boot to Linux and you can try accessing the files from your RAID configuration without even installing the OS.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

I apologize for the late reply. Upon installation, the Linux installer failed to recognize the partition in my RAID volume as a suitable location for install. I decided to use an external hard drive I had. I partitioned that, and it installed without a problem. I can access, edit, and use my files from the RAID volume, but Linux just installed on the external hard drive as opposed to the flash drive. Thank you again for the quick reply!

 

[Boogieman_WD]

You are most welcome. The important thing is that everything worked out fine after all.