Installing Ubuntu on an external hard drive: How to do it

In principle, there is nothing against installing the Ubuntu operating system on an external hard drive. Linux software can be installed on an external storage medium.

How to install Ubuntu on an external hard drive

Some prerequisites should be met before installation, however. For example, you will need a USB flash drive or a USB hard drive with at least 4 GB of storage. You also need to disable UEFI Secure Boot for the installation.

1. Basically, the installation works just like on an internal hard drive. You will first need the desktop CD or live USB. The boot manager, however, named "GRUB 2" must be installed on the USB media.
2. Boot from the CD or stick and select "Install Ubuntu > Set partitions manually (advanced)".
3. Confirm with "Yes" that you want to unmount the hard drive.
4. Add the external hard drive as a partition and set a larger root partition and a smaller swap partition. Usually, you can leave the default calculated values here.
5. Follow the further steps of the installation wizard. Before you complete the installation of Ubuntu on the external hard drive, you will see a control overview in which you can check your settings.
6. In case of problems, you may need to change the boot order in the BIOS.

On the USB media can subsequently also install various additional programs to complete the operating system. After that, you can fully use Ubuntu in its complete functionality.