tried every single way I found on the Internet but no success. The only way
I got something was using Ubuntu, removing the cables from my HDDs and
turning the pen drive into a removable HDD. It worked. Could start and use
ubuntu from a different computer then the one I've used to install it.

Is there a tip or something different to try? I just followed lot's and
lot's of instruction from http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ but got nothing.
I've tried to install it within windows, from a bunch of distros's with Live
CDs, with unetbootin using previus downloaded ISOs and downloading within
it...

I just don't know what else to do.

If Ubuntu worked fine, other distros should work as fine as it did.

The pen drive is working flawless and the partitioning (with gParted) worked
fine too, could check it using windows.

I don't know what the problem is. I use usb keys with installed Linux all of the
time. I use unetbootin almost daily to make bootable usb keys from which to
install Linux. I have also used pendrivelinux and other methods.

There are a few things to remember. The pendrivelinux approach is easier to do
it from Windows if that is the environment that you are most familiar with. If
you use unetbootin, you need to have the usb empty and mounted before you open
the programme of your key will not appear in the device list.. If you want
persistence then need to follow those instructions separately as a post
installation step.

Your BIOS settings come into play. If you use grub, it needs to be written to
the key itself and not a hard drive. Why you need to disconnect your hard drive
is because grub is naming its devices differently. I am thinking that you don't
have a boot manager and when your BIOS has your drives enabled this changes the
order and the grub settings don't work.

An explanation of what is happening:
Let's say you have two hard drives. One is sda and the other is sdb. The usb key
then becomes sdc. When you write grub to the usb key it should be saved in grub
as hd(0,0) as grub uses an ordinal system with zero being the first drive in the
chain and the second zero is the first partition on that drive. This will be
written into grub and can only be changed by editing the file. A boot manager
does what you are physically doing when you disconnect your drives. Grub will
work and Ubuntu will load because you will have the hd(0,0) situation. However
when the drives are attached and you don't have a boot manager sda becomes
(hd0,0), sdb becomes (hd1,0) and the usb key will be had(2,0) and grub will fail
to load because the settings are pointing to hd(0,0) and it can't find the
kernel on your first hard drive because it isn't there, but on the key.

To remedy the situation you need a boot manager. My HP BIOS comes with one. I
just press ESC and then I can choose to boot from the usb key instead of my hard
drives. Another option would be to edit grub on your usb key to change it to be
hd(3,0), but this would not be useful because it would fail if you tried to use
it on a different computer. That is why hd(0,0) is so important. It is neutral,
provided you can choose to boot from the usb key before the hard drives. You can
get third party boot managers. There is even and open source one. I am not sure
if they would work because it is written to the first sector of your first hard
drive. It certainly would not help if you put your key into another computer
without a boot manager. You would be stuck once again.

You can try changing the boot order in your BIOS, so that the usbkey is first in
order. I am not sure if this would work as both of my computers have a boot
manager and I have never had to worry about it not working. Perhaps someone who
has no boot manager and uses usb keys to install a distro can jump in.

I think I got that.

But, let's suppose that the only storage device plugged on the mainboard is
the Pen Drive, configured with HP Drive Key Boot Utility to be recognized as
a Hard Drive (as I did), and the mainboard do reconizes it as a Hard Drive.

If so, GRUB should "mark" it as HD(0,0). Am I right?

And Why only ubuntu works? That's the most strange thing about it.

And I think can edit the boot manager (GRUB) if you tell me how.

*And thank you Canuck. I think you're helping me to get there :)* 'cause the
problem is for sure with the boot manager.

But, let's suppose that the only storage device plugged on the mainboard is
the Pen Drive, configured with HP Drive Key Boot Utility to be recognized as
a Hard Drive (as I did), and the mainboard do reconizes it as a Hard Drive.

If so, GRUB should "mark" it as HD(0,0). Am I right?

No. Grub does not change since it is a file that is written at the
time of installation. It can be editted, but it does not change unless you do so
intentionallywhich is where the problem lies. The drive order is relative to
that poiunt in time and if you change your setup, it messes with what grub is
pointing to.

And Why only ubuntu works? That's the most strange thing about it.

And I think can edit the boot manager (GRUB) if you tell me how.

*And thank you Canuck. I think you're helping me to get there :)* 'cause the
problem is for sure with the boot manager.

Grub is written at the time of installation. Each installer handles things
differently. In MEPIS, for example, you can choose where to write grub to. It
gives a suggestion, but you can change it. The Ubuntu installer attempts to
simplify things and it hides the option. It is under the Advanced drop down on
page 7 of the installer. Most people miss this because they are not curious, are
in a hurry, or don't understand that they have a choice and that it makes a
difference. Most people do not even realize that they have a choice. I think
that the goal of the Ubuntu team is to try to limit the number of choices so
that people are not intimidated.

To edit grub you can work from any Linux system that you can boot into, even a
Live CD. You cannot use Windows if your usb key is formatted with ext file
system unless you install a utility called ext2fs which can read Linus file
systems from Windows. You need to mount your usb key by inserting it. If a
window opens when you insert it then close it and ignore that window. You just
need to be sure that it is mounted and it is if the window opens.

Assuming that you are using Ubuntu or another Gnome based distro open a terminal
and type: sudo nautilus. Provide your password. Nautilus, the file manager, will
open at root of whatever you are working from. Important: Keep your terminal
window open until you have editted and saved the file.

You need to navigate to your usb key. Look in the tree on the left side of
Nautilus and open your key. It will have a bunch of folders showing. One is
called boot. Navigate there. There will be a subfolder there called grub. Open
it. Look for a file called menu.lst. Right-click on it. Choose "open with text
editor" from the top of the drop down menu. The file is just a text file. Open
it. Look for the line that says, hd(x,y) where x and y are numbers. Change them
to hd(0,0) Those are zeroes, not Os. Save. Now you can close Nautilus and the
terminal. Reboot and try it out.

An alternative method is to use the command sudo gedit and then choose to open
the file from the text editor. You must do this as root which is why we use sudo
for opening either nautilus or gedit.

It sounds like you have boot manager, like I do. My HP requires me to
press escape at the first blue screen. If you edit grub so that it
reads (hd(0,0) for Ubuntu then you should be able to use your key with
the drives attached, as the boot manager will boot the usb key first,
making it hd0 which is what you need in order for it to match what grub
needs it to be.. The problem with using a key comes when you try to use
it elsewhere. You need to be able to control the boot process on each computer
to make
sure it boots from the key before the drives kick in. Most recent computers have
built in boot managers, but some older ones don't, making this a less attractive
option.

I changed on linux ubuntu and within other distro's I've installed, on the
last page, the local where the boot manager must be installed.

With Ubuntu everything works fine. Started the pendrive ubuntu on every
machine I've tried. But others distro's do not work.

When installing the distros, even Ubuntu, I've disconnected the other
storage devices (except the CD/DVD, to boot Live CDs) and the only
recognizable HDD was the Pen Drive. When selecting the device to install
Boot Manager, I've selected the Pen drive, the device, not one of the
partitions I've set up during installation.

When I do that installing Ubuntu, everything goes fine. When I do that
installing other distros, nothing goes fine.

When I do that, the Boot Manager is stored on the Pen Drive. Right? Then, if
the Pen Drive is the only device configured within Boot Manager, doesn't
matter if there is other HDD installed when booting the Pen Drive on a
diferent computer. Right?

Ubuntu is fine and complete for me to use, but since I'm booting from a Pen
Drive, I need a lighter distro. And put that distro to work is the problem.
Why Lime, that have a instalation process similar to Ubuntu's ( 'cause it's
debian based, I think ) do not work? That's what bothers me the most!

Not all distros are the same. Linux is just the kernel. On top of that lots
is added to make it an OS. Each distribution handles things differently. There
are different installers, different partitioners, and just about everything else
is subject to change. Ubuntu and its derivatives use the same installer. Debian
has its own and so on. Some distributions use grub and others choose LILO as
boot managers. With all of this variety it is not surprising that you are having
different experiences with installing it to a usb stick.

If you go to Pendrivelinux.com, the ones there will usually install to a
pendrive if you follow their instructions. However, even this is no guarantee
that they will work because each distro handles hardware differently. Simple
things like IRQ conflicts, video resolution, ACPI, APIC and even disk drives can
cause problems. For example, if you have a bad drive or one that did not shut
down properly, etc, it could cause the installation to stall or the boot process
to fail. I have a flaky usb drive that I use for storage and some distros stall
until I turn it off. I know this and have learned to work around it. The reason
is your hardware is polled during the boot process and if anything is amiss, it
will find it.

I cannot get openSUSE to install to a usb drive. I managed to do it once or
twice, but it won't re-boot no matter what I do. This could be a problem with
SUSE, in which case others would experience it too, or it could be unique to me
and my hardware.

When I do that, the Boot Manager is stored on the Pen Drive.
Right? Then, if the Pen Drive is the only device configured within Boot Manager,
doesn't matter if there is other HDD installed when booting the Pen Drive on a
diferent computer. Right?

The boot manager should be written to the pendrive, but if you did not tell
it to specifically write there, it will most likely write to sda or whatever the
first drive in your chain is. It does matter when you boot on another computer,
only in the sense that other computers need to be able to boot from usb and you
must have it set up so that you can control the boot order so that the usb key
boots first.

If ever you run into a problem, you can manually edit grub if it fails. The
changes will only be termporary as it is done in RAM and the file is not written
back to the usb key. What happens is that grub will give you an error meaning
that it can't find the kernel to boot. For example, let's say the computer has
one hard drive, sda, and for
some reason grub is confused and thinks that sda is hd(0,0). This would
cause grub to fail. So what you do is escape back to the grub menu. Navigate to
the line of grub that is causing the problem and press e for edit. You cursor
over and change hd(0,0) to whatever is necessary to get it to boot. You might
try hd(1,0) when you have made this change press enter and then b for boot and
enter again. This on the fly editing is something that you may have to do from
time to time if you do lots of installations. This is not likely to happen if
you get grub to open, but I have seen it happen if things are not setup properly
to begin with.

Ubuntu is fine and complete for me to use, but since I'm booting
from a Pen Drive, I need a lighter distro. And put that distro to work is the
problem.Why Lime, that have a instalation process similar to Ubuntu's ( 'cause
it's debian based, I think ) do not work? That's what bothers me the most!

You might want to try the following distros which are known to play nicely:
Xubuntu which is from the same folks as Ubuntu, but it uses a desktop that uses
fewer resources (XFCE). Slax is based on slackware, but PendriveLinux has a
great tutorial on how to install this and it works well provided you have an
ethernet connection. I have not had good luck installing wireless with it. gOS
is based on Ubuntu, but has lower requirements. Puppy Linux, DSL and NimbleX
can be made to install using the PendriveLinux.com site. Their own PendriveLinux
distro is based on Mandriva, but it is no better than Ubuntu viz a vis
resources. PCLOS Mini-me is also a good choice. I think you mean Mint instead of
Lime. It should work, but it relies on Gnome and won't be any better than
Ubuntu. They have had Fluxbox and mini-KDE versions in the past but they are not
out yet for Mint 6.

An easier solution, if you have a working key is to change the desktop in Ubuntu
from GNOME to XFCE, Fluxbox or LXDE. To do this just open Synaptic and search
for xubuntu for XFCE as your desktop or Fluxbox or LXDE if they are your
choices. Do not remove Ubuntu until you are sure that you new desktop is
working. Before you login, click in sessions at the bottom of the login screen
to switch to another desktop.. Once you have booted into the other desktop and
things are to your liking you can open Synaptic again and remove Ubuntu-desktop.