[Discuss] Installing without an optical drive...

[Clarke Brunsdon]

Were it me, I would put in my flash linux usb key:
http://flashlinux.org.uk/

If i had problems with hardware detection, I would find out whats not
working and skip that.

Do a net install of your favourite linux distro once that is running.

~Clarke

On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 19:41 -0700, Leamy Acoustic Art Inc. wrote:
> Hello all, I am looking for direction.
> 
>         During an upgrade of my laptop, my cd-rom died. I had completed
> the initial install, Mandriva 2007 free, and had noticed it was a bit
> buggy. There had been some bad packages during install, so I decided to
> reinstall. I made it as far as the formatting of the OS partition when
> the drive died. I am now left with a virginal OS partition, and my data
> partition inaccessible. I have currently tried Installing much smaller
> distros ... Puppy and DSL ... with no luck, as well I have tried getting
> the data off of my drive using a 2.5 to 3.5 adaptor. No good. I have
> also tried using a USB device to remote install DLS onto the OS
> partition, again with no luck. In this last case I actually managed to
> get as far as detecting hardware, etc, before it returned errors that
> ended the install.
> 
>         If anyone has suggestions that might help me get a working OS
> onto the system I would appreciate it. I am planning on finding a new
> optical drive for my laptop ... Toshiba Satellite 1800 ... but until
> then I would simply like an installed OS to allow me to transfer data on
> and off the system, do basic word processing, etc.
> 
>         Thanks in advance for any tips, and just so you know what level
> of verbosity to aim for, I am basically a desktop user.
> 
>         Michael Leamy.
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