Hey everyone! I'm having a bit of a dilemma with my ASUS laptop since it doesn't have an internal SSD or HDD due to a broken cable. I'm attempting to use a 500GB USB external HDD as my boot drive. I've installed MX Linux on the USB HDD and also tried Windows, but after powering on, I'm taken straight to the BIOS instead of booting from the USB. The laptop doesn't seem to recognize it as a bootable device, though it shows up during the installation process. I've tried disabling Secure Boot and found that a flash drive works fine, but no luck with the HDD. So, I'm wondering if it's possible to boot an OS from a USB HDD on older ASUS models? Could this be a BIOS limitation, an issue with the enclosure, or maybe something else? I'd appreciate any insights or similar experiences!
3 Answers
Just a heads up, if there's no option to add the HDD in the BIOS, it might really be a limitation of the older hardware. Some older models just don't support booting from USB HDDs, especially if they only boot from specific file systems.
If adding it manually doesn’t work, consider using a tool like WinPE with BootICE. It can help you modify the UEFI settings and point directly to the correct .EFI file. Just make sure to look up the right parameters for your setup.
You might need to manually add the USB HDD in the BIOS settings. Check if you can point it to the .efi file that loads your Linux distribution. Sometimes it helps to adjust those settings manually to recognize the external drive.
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