No, you can use it. If you can boot it from a USB stick, you dont need the hard disk.bounddosster wrote:The Toshiba hard drive is knackered so I assume unusable for trying this or am I wrong about that?
You may need to make a change in the BIOS. Toshiba Protege: Esc key, Toshiba Satellite: F1 key, Toshiba Tecra: Esc first and then F1 or F2.
Then change the boot order, disable the Secure Boot option and save it.
It won't work as fast as when it's actually on a hard drive, but that way you can try it out first.
Linux Mint also allows you to try it first on a stick on your HP computer without installing it. I have a stick with 8 different versions of Linux (Mint Mate, Mint Lite, Ubuntu, Kali, Knoppix, Clonezilla, Puppy, Zorin OS) via the program Ventoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2iXFlA19mA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuonyS3xdwg (for the newer version). I can run it on any computer without having to install anything. This without the risk of damaging your HP computer.
What you can also do if this doesn't work is buy a very old computer on the second-hand market or see where you can get it for free (schools, companies that change computers, ...) and set up the Linux Mint Mate here and try it out.
PS: When you download the different distributions of Linux, choose always the LTS (Long Term Support) *.iso files.They are the most tested en secure versions.