Installing Linux From A USB Stick To A USB Stick

Situation: You have a laptop where both the optical drive and the hard drive are dead. The price of both a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive and a slim CD burner is just too expensive to justify the cost.

Can this laptop still be used? Yes. Assuming it can boot from USB and has 2 USB ports, you can make the laptop live once again.

Here’s how it’s done:

First, you need two USB sticks. One has to be a minimum 4GB (where the OS will go) and the other a minimum 1GB (where the installation files come from).

Second, format both USB sticks.

Third, download UNetbootin. Plug in your 1GB stick, run UNetbootin and have it download your Linux of choice. The software will automatically format and partition the USB stick and make it bootable.

Fourth, go into the BIOS of the laptop and enable it to boot from USB.

Fifth, plug in the USB sticks and install your Linux. It’s as simple as that.

Notes:

USB ports do have an order to them. If when you’re booting with both sticks in the laptop chooses the wrong one to boot from, power down the laptop, swap the sticks and boot again. It will then choose the correct one.

Running a full Linux distribution off a USB stick is a bit on the slow side, however if you’re in a situation where you have no other choice, this is acceptable to at least have a working OS.

Even if you have a computer with a good working hard drive, setting up a fully operational Linux OS on a stick is good to have as it’s better than a “Live” mode CD since you can configure everything to your liking – and save the settings.

If installing a Linux this way, I do recommend physically disconnecting the hard drive before install so there is absolutely no way Linux or its partition manager can “touch” the drive, so to speak.

Total price to do this is only the cost of the sticks themselves (which can be as cheap as $10 for both!)