For all of you tech-savvy people

[VSMIT]

Has anybody attempted to install Ubuntu to an external hard drive?  I tried earlier today and discovered that in the process the OS on my internal hard drive got bricked.  Thankfully I had it backed up, but I don't think I'm going to be trying this again without advice.  Any tips?

I'm running Mac OS X on a late-2007 Macbook Pro, in case that's relevant.  I'm connecting to the external drive via firewire spec 400, but could switch to USB if necessary.

Thanks in advance.

[Jack McSlay]

odd that it killed your main partition. Did you ensure that you were using a partition on the external drive and not the main HD? If you chose automatic partitioning (the default option on the partitioning stage) it's possible that Ubuntu doesn't understand Mac OS filesystems well, causing it to screw up your main partition.

If you're installing on an HD that's not the main one, you need to do a manual partition.

[VSMIT]

I used the alternate (read: text based) installer, which actually showed my external drive as a selection, whereas the standard installer didn't.  I did know to use the manual partitioning tool, though.  I made sure to install to the correct partition on the external drive, /dev/sdb2/, and made sure that /dev/sda1/ said "Do not use."  I think the problem is that I don't understand where to put the GRUB bootloader, since I use rEFIt as a bootloader for the Mac.  I had partitioned the external drive into three roughly equal partitions, and formatted one partition as FAT32 to make sure it was compatible.

[Jack McSlay]

Not picking up the HD on the visual installer can't be a good sign. did you try with USB with the same results?

and as for boot manager, your best choice is to remove the internal HD(s) and do the installation with only the external HD connected as storage device. This way the boot loader is intalled and configured automatically to the external drive, and you just have to make it bootable.
GRUB is not kept in the MBR, but in a GRUB-compatible filesystem, therefore it would require you to not set your main HD to load the GRUB, which is an option that I believe is not present in the Ubuntu installer (leaving you the choice of physically removing the HDs you do not want to be harmed). Otherwise, your computer will be unbootable without the Ubuntu HD connected to it.

In fact, based on what you said now, it seems the "bricking" was caused by the installer telling your main HD to search for the boot loader on the external drive, but the grub loader is apparently unable to find it, rendering your computer unbootable. (that being the case, your files are intact and you just need to run a repair install of whatever OS there is in it)

[VSMIT]

Yeah, Firewire and USB had the same results.  My dad doesn't want me to open up my computer for some reason, so that's out.  I could try again and install GRUB to the Ubuntu partition, but it probably won't work.

[Jack McSlay]

That being, you DO need to set your external drive as bootable and then set up GRUB after the install. Google for "ubuntu fix grub", you need to make your root the partition with ubuntu on it (probable something like "root(1,0)" ) and setup the external hd for it (probably "setup(1)" )

late edit: I've made an Ubuntu install yesterday and I saw that you can configure how GRUB is setup on the last window prior to the installation itself, by cliking on "Advanced". Not sure how it's done in the alternate install, tho