Installing Puppy Linux to Hard Drive

I was having some trouble that I felt was unnecessary, trying to install Puppy Linux to a hard drive (HDD) on an older computer.  The Puppy Universal Installer makes it easy, but I was messing something up.

This post assumes you just want Puppy Linux on your HDD, so no partitioning to make it simpler (I would recommend this to only PC's you keep off the internet).  Otherwise, you would have to use a program like GParted and partition your drive how you want (maybe even encrypt for extra security).

Before you begin, first you should already have a copy of bootable Puppy Linux on a USB stick or CD/DVD, previous posts show how to do that and the procedure stays the same mostly and is pretty easy.

You need to check the type of your HDD as Puppy Linux will ask you in the Universal Installer.  Check to do the Full Install and not Frugal (unless you want to use the HDD for something else, putting Puppy Linux on a HDD is assuming the computer is old and can't run much else with modern speed and convience).

These parts were all pretty self-explanatory.  What's tricky is after you get done.  DO NOT DELETE THE TEXT FILE THAT COMES UP AFTER INSTALL.  You need it.  Set up Grub4Dos and install on the MBR.  Mostly point and click setup that's made easy for you.  Now, *IF* you have a IDE-base HDD, you should change the line in the menu.lst file.  Otherwise the install won't work.  It's about 3 lines.  Copy the lines from the text file and paste into menu.lst.

This should work and you should be able to boot Puppy Linux from your HDD now.

Questions in the comments if you have any.