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I want to install Ubuntu to an external SSD, but have it encrypted, so that if I ever lose it, my data is still fairly safe. I also want some space at the end of the SSD to put some files that I can easily move between computers (like a usb stick).

I first tried following this post but I couldn't setup ubuntu in such a way that there was space left over at the end. I tried many ways of resizing the encrypted partitions, but they all never seemed to work (the encrypted partitions had a larger combined size than the thing they were in). This was partly due to the instructions being very hard to understand.

Can someone guide me through how to achieve this properly? The things that I have at my disposal are:

  • A computer that has the capability of disabling drive access in the BIOS itself
  • 1 16 gb usb stick
  • An external SSD

I need it to be able to work on any computer I plug it in to. Therefore, it would be ideal if it could support all booting mechanisms. I am also fairly new to this so if there are many commands to do, can someone write them out individually, especially if different commands are needed in different scenarios.

Muk
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1 Answers1

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Disable any internal devices on your computer.

Set the BIOS to Legacy BIOS and disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot, if enabled.

I suggest based on my experience that:

Download the Ubuntu 24.04.2 ISO from https://releases.ubuntu.com/noble/ubuntu-24.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso, not 24.10 or 25.04.

Burn the ISO to a USB drive with enough space +8GB.

Rufus and balenaEtcher are usually suitable. In Linux the dd command is also effective.

Disable any internal devices on your computer.

Set the BIOS to Legacy BIOS and disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot, if enabled.

Connect your external SSD.

Boot with the USB drive created with the Ubuntu ISO.

Start an Ubuntu live session.

Once the boot is complete, open a terminal and run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install gparted
sudo gparted

From GParted select the HDD drive.

Unmount partitions, if mounted, from the last to the first.

Create a new gpt partition table.

In the free space, create a 1GB FAT32 Bios-Efi partition.

Next create a 100GB ext4 partition.

Create another 16GB swap partition.

Create another remaining ext4 partition that you plan to use for Linux.

Leave unpartitioned space at the end of the SDD

Apply the changes.

Close GParted.

Close the terminal.

Start the Ubuntu installation.

Choose the manual partitioning option and select:

Grub, by default, on the HDD Bios-Efi patition

The 100GB partition for / encrypted

The 16GB partition for swap encrypted

The remaining one for /home encrypted

Continue with the installation.

The sizes and number of partitions are suggested based on my experience and preference for having a separate swap and /home partition to preserve personal files during future updates.

Once you're up and running your system from your external SDD drive and configured, create a partition on the rest of the drive using GParted, NTFS, or ExFAT file systems to have your files available for any operating system and computer you want.

kyodake
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