issues with debian on 2ndary harddrive

[Wraith2288]

I've deleted everything on my second harddrive (USB), and formatted it as well. When I boot from the disc and start to set it up, the only disk I can select to partition/install on is hda, rather than hdb (which, being the second harddrive, is where i want to install it). I checked to make sure it was plugged in, turned on, etc, but it still doesn't show up. What am I doing wrong? This is my first time installing Linux, so it may be something obvious that I missed.

[Wraith2288]

maybe I should add: I'm running a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop, and this is my first time running linux. Most of the sites I've found for running linux on this computer seem to vary between "i had to completely change everything in linux" and "i put in the cd and used the default settings"... so I really don't know what I'm doing. I, sadly, do not really have the money to buy another computer to run Linux on, and my only other available computer is a 5 year old Compaq that my parents replaced after it totally screwed itself up (something shorted out, if i remember correctly), so I'd really like to get it to work on the laptop. Also, I'm currently trying it with debian- is there another distro that is more laptop-friendly?

[Choozo]

I don't think your problem is the laptop itself, but that you are trying to install onto a removeable media - USB harddrive.

You need to find a boot image that have USB support included at boot time, since the current boot image the installer are using obviously don't have a clue about USB storage. Maybe all you need is to drop into a shell (Alt+F2?) and mount the drive? You could do a search on www.google.com/linux for 'installing on USB harddrive'.

Check Debians website for downloadable boot floppy images that have USB support included, and take it from there.

Cheers :)

[Wraith2288]

thank you very much, but still: before i go out and look for another disc of debian, is there one particular distro that works well with laptops?

[Choozo]

Just about any recent distro work very well with laptops. Your 'problem' here is that you want to install Linux on a USB harddrive, which I imagine is a challenge on any type of PC.

Not enough space on the internal harddrive you have there?

[Wraith2288]

OK, I'll try looking for images with USB support, thanks again.

[Choozo]

Quite frankly, I think you will have a hard time finding that, and I don't believe even Windows would install onto a USB drive?