Install to USB (persistent)

General system EndeavourOS installation
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So, I would like to install EndeavourOS on a USB. I’m not talking about the live USB, but rather about installing onto a USB, so that I have a persistent installation on a USB (instead of an SSD/HDD drive).

As far as I know I can do this relatively easily by booting the live USB, plugging in an additional USB (to another USB port), and then simply installing onto this additional USB.

And here’s my question - the machine I’ll be doing this on already has Ubuntu and Windows installed (dual boot). I do NOT want the EndeavourOS installer to update whatever boot loader is already there. In other words, I just want EndeavourOS on this additional USB, and I’ll boot to it from the BIOS boot menu whenever I need to use this.

How can I achieve this? (i.e. tell the installer to “just install on this drive, without changing the boot loader on any other drive”). Asking as I think that the EndeavourOS installer (by default) does update boot records (but I may be wrong, of course).

I’m hoping I managed to explain myself. Thanks in advance for your help! :slight_smile:

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If this is a UEF install, you could always go into your UEFI settings and change the boot order the way you want even after they have been altered by the new install to the USB. You just need to make sure that you install the bootloader to your USB’s EFI system partition and nowhere else.

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I personally wouldn’t but that’s your choice. I have an external SSD that i install to and i disable OS-Prober so it doesn’t pick up the other OS on the system. This works just like it’s installed. It’s very fast and much better than installing to a usb thumb drive in my opinion.

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This is smart to do. No need for the Grub on the USB to pick up the other OS:es installed “internally”.

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I just find that installing to a USB and trying to make it persistent is not very good. In comparison to installing it to an external SSD is night and day. I have tried and used persistent usb many times over the years. The only one i like that doesn’t work bad is MX linux because they have it setup to create this automatically and it does work well. Any others i just found to be horrible. So i moved to SSD because it works just like installed system. Plus i don’t use MX anymore much! :wink:

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I agree! Let’s see what OP has to say about it. I would very much also use SSD for having a “mobile” system.

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SSD works absolutely the same as if its the drive in the system.

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How did you disable os-prober?

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You can either totally uninstall it or disable it in the default grub command line and update grub.

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10

Never thought of that :smiley:

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I’ve got an extra nvme drive. . . A fully portable system sounds interesting

I can use my work computer in a much better way possibly.

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I wrote a few blog posts about that.
You can do that through virtual box

Or without that

Hope it helps