Using Partition as a live-USB

[Fred Barclay]

Would it be possible to set up a small (6GB or so) partition on my hard drive and use it in the same way I would use a live usb for installing an OS?
I distro-hop a lot--actually, I have 110GB of my hard drive set aside especially for whatever distro I'm testing at the moment (Arch, currently)--so I use live USBs frequently. However, I only have a few USBs, and I need every one for data, so I have to copy and paste the contents of one every time I want to install a new Linux.
If I could use a hard drive partition as a live USB, and install from it, that would save me a lot of trouble.

I'm guessing GRUB won't let me do it?

Thanks!
Fred

[xenopeek]

I'm not sure if that is such a good idea, but yeah you can boot ISO files on your hard disk directly through GRUB. Using VirtualBox sounds easier for test driving ISOs though (what I do).

[Fred Barclay]

Unfortunately I've never gotten VB to work well in LMDE. Maybe I'll have better luck with Betsy?
Anyway, I usually try to install the OS I'm testing. VMs just don't seem the same--especially when it comes to speed. I wouldn't call LMDE blazingly fast on my machine (1 GB RAM, Cinnamon desktop), so a VM guest might seem slow when it's really the host that's the problem.

Thanks though. Now that I know it can be done, I've got to decide if I want to try.

[xenopeek]

Ah yes, with 1 GB RAM VirtualBox won't be very useful.

Here are a couple of example entries for grub to boot ISOs directly from your hard disk: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mu ... ot_entries. It takes some manual work