making bootable CentOS hard disk from Windows

[jal045]

I am new to CentOS but have searched for an answer to this, to no avail....
I have a hard disk with Windows installed on it from a desktop computer. It is currently connected to my Windows 10 laptop via USB.
I want to format this external hard disk, install CentOS on it, reinstall it in the desktop computer, and have that desktop computer boot up CentOS.

I found instructions on doing all sorts of things, but I`m not sure in my case how to format the drive and install Linux on it from Windows running on my laptop.

Could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

[TrevorH]

If this is your first experience with linux then what you want to do is not easy. Far better to reinstall the disk in your desktop, download the full DVD image (not the "Everything" version) and write that to a usb stick and boot your machine from that and go through the install.

You cannot run the installer "in windows", it boots CentOS to run the install which then partitions and formats your disk and install from the copy of the DVD.

[jal045]

There's no way to copy a CentOS image to an external drive?

The original Windows installation is corrupted on the drive.

[TrevorH]

CentOS doesn't use anything from Windows at all. If the copy of windows is corrupted and you want to install CentOS to it instead, then just reinstall the drive in the desktop, boot the DVD (either from DVD or from USB) and it already has everything required to repartition the disk, format the filesystems and install itself onto it. That will of course overwrite any data you had on the disk so you would need to back that up first if there's anything on there that you need. If you have a laptop running windows and can attach the disk to that then you could use that to back up your files before you put the disk back in the desktop and wipe it.

[jal045]

Right. I`m reformatting it with FAT32, and I`ve made a CD with the CentOS 7 image on it (bootable).

[TrevorH]

CentOS won't install to FAT32 but it'll offer to format the partition using one of the supported linux filesystems instead.

[jal045]

OK, thanks. I read somewhere that Linux was generally compatible with FAT32. I guess not