installing linux mint on a harddrive to install in a old computor

[anned]

I have a old dell latitude 2120 that has no hard drive and i have a new 500GB SSD and want to install Linux mint on the hard drive using my lenove Win 10 computer and just install it in the old dell computer.

Do i just copy linux mint download to the SSD drive or do i have to have some kind of boot program. I have installed Linux on other computers with a Linux CD but this old computer has no cd drive and i can not get pendrive linux to work even though i has always worked on other computers for setting up Duel boot

I have a USB cloning cable so i can connect to new SSD drive to my Lenovo computer.

 

[KGIII]

Your best option is to install the SSD in your 'old dell computer'. Then, you *write* the ISO to a USB drive using something like Rufus or Balena Etcher (you're not copying the ISO to the thumbdrive, you're writing it as an image to the thumb drive, just like writing an .ISO to an optical disk).

Once you've done those two things, insert the USB thumbdrive into the 'old dell computer', boot that computer, and select the USB device during the boot process. It's a Dell, so it's almost certainly F12 at the BIOS menu to open the one time boot menu.

You *can* install it on your new Win 10 computer, but you'll end up having boot loader issues. There's no reason to bother with that. I recently moved an SSD to a laptop with Mint installed, but that's an entirely different process. Seriously, just install the SSD in the old computer and then install your OS.

 

[anned]

Tried that as i have a USB thumb drive set up with linux mint i have used a number of times before on other computers.

it does not work on this dell computer. the dell computer does not see the thumb drive.

 

[darry1966]

specs: https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/latit/en/latitude_2120_spec_sheet_business.pdf

 

[KGIII]

You have a 32 bit CPU. You'll need a 32 bit .ISO. Thanks to @darry1966 for posting the specs.

For something current and in the Mint family, that leaves you with LMDE.

 

[darry1966]

Antix or MXlinux, Devuan as well.

 

[darry1966]

Sparky Linux - Stretch version updated recently.