Installation of Freebsd on external (USB) hard drive (using GRUB)

[openbsd.org at fluet.com]

> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:40:51 +0100
> From: Marco Calviani <marco.calviani at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Installation of Freebsd on external hard drive
>
> Hi Eric and list,
> unfortunately my BIOS (of a Travelmate 8005) does not support boot from USB
> devices.
> I'll search for some other information that comes from multi-os users.
>
> Thanks again,
> MC
>
> > I've installed it on USB keys and external USB drives with no problem.
> >
> > Since I was only using those for experimentation, I never modified my
> > boot loader. My BIOS provides a boot menu for selecting the boot
> > device, of which "external USB device" is an option. I found this
> > cleaner, since when not using those devices I do not have to go through
> > the FreeBSD boot menu.
> >
> > Hints?
> > For my situation... I booted from the CD. When asked to slice and
> > partition my disk... I chose the external USB device. I selected the
> > 'standard boot loader'. Then the rest of the magic is handled by my BIOS.
> >
> > Don't know if that helps you much.

I'm a little late replying, but I thought I would reply if only for archival 
searches on this subject.

I have an Acer C300 TabletPC and the BIOS does not support booting from USB.

This doesn't matter, however, since you can install a boot loader onto the 
LAPTOP'S hard drive that will boot the USB partitions for you.

I don't recall if the FreeBSD boot loader does this, but GRUB 
(/usr/ports/sysutils/grub) definitely does.

Here is my grub /boot/grub/menu.lst:

--------------------------------------------------

title WindowsXP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive
savedefault

title FreeBSD RELENG-5
root (hd0,1,a)
kernel /boot/loader
savedefault

title FreeBSD RELENG-6
root (hd0,2,a)
kernel /boot/loader
savedefault

title FreeBSD Portable Disk
root (hd1,1,a)
kernel /boot/loader
savedefault

title OpenBSD Portable Disk
root (hd1,2)
chainloader +1
makeactive
savedefault

--------------------------------------------------

As you can see, on the laptop's hard drive (hd0), I have WindowsXP and two 
FreeBSD installations.  On the USB drive (hd1), I have a non-bootable DOS 
partition (no entry but would be entered hd1,0), a FreeBSD partition, and an 
OpenBSD partition.  

I hope this helps some.  

-- Kevin