Premiss I have just built my first desktop PC and it has been a lot of fun, but the instant I tried to use Windows for coding I noticed I needed a *nix system. I was on a Macbook before and it worked well for what I needed, now it's time to switch to Linux for the main coding system, I'll not abandon macOS entirely of course, but the aim is to limit its use as much as I can. So keep this in mind, I'm a noob and I'm starting now with Linux :D Where I would like to install Ubuntu on the 3rd SSD, my sistem is  and I have Windows on the NVMe and a 2TB SATA for everything else. I found a 128GB SATA SSD laying around and so decided to use it for Linux and start this adventure! Anyway, I'm making this question to be sure I do everything right since I did not had a great experience while installing Windows, is basically spreaded boot files around in the 2 SSDs randomly even tho I specifically selected the NVMe, fortunately I did notice it fast enough and didn't do much work, I proceeded to disconnect the SATA and install Windows on the NVMe (only one connected). I think Linux is a bit cleaner but I wan to be sure. What I know I downlaoded the ISO for the LTS version on the official website, if it works like Windows I would be able to burn it with Rufus on a 4GB usb stick and just reboot my system to get the prompt to install Ubuntu where I like. I can use the SSD MBR or GPT, since I never really got advantage on one or the other. What did I get wrong and what should I do? Watching video and reading guides, there seems to be a lot of options to do this, and for a noob like me it started to be confusing. Should I just disconnect the other SSDs to be sure and boot the PC only with the USB and the 128GB SSD connected? The SATA is pretty easy to disconnect, a bit more work will be needed for me to disconnect the NVMe tho... Main questions  GPT or MBR? Does it depend on my other SSDs? If so why? Will I have to pollute other SSDs in the process? (2.1) Can I make a clean install on just ONE single SSD? I am confused about the partitioning, how much and why, location, ... I am confused about the boot, why people select Windows Boot if I'm installing Linux on a separate SSD?  What is your advice and which method should I use? Any tip is appreciated! :D Thanks!
565
I have 2 1tb hard drives on my computer with Windows 8 on the first hard drive and nothing on the other.  I want to install Ubuntu 14 on the second hard drive. I've looked up some guides and they all say to install Ubuntu on the sdb partition when booting off a usb stick. I have also seen some say to unplug the Windows HDD and then install Ubuntu onto the second HDD, and Ubuntu will automatically detect Windows and ask what you want to boot into upon boot.   I am really concerned about this - Will it ask me to choose what OS I want to boot into? Is there something like rEFInd(Mac) for Windows? Can anyone please give me a guide on how to do it without ruining my computer?  Thanks
58686
Why do I need these? I have installed Ubuntu under a non UEFI (master boot record) and have installed Ubuntu with no 'biosgrub' and it works fine, whereas other times I am asked to make a 'biosgrub' partition.  I have no idea why sometimes I need it and others I don't (these have both been on the same system).  And the same thing happens when I use UEFI (GUID Partition Table).  The only difference is I am asked to make a 'EFI boot partition', but as with the 'biosgrub', sometimes I am asked to make it and sometimes I am not asked to make it.  For my current install I was asked to make one but I didn't and my system is fine. There is no change in the system, same hardware, BIOS etc... Could anyone shed light on this?
81169
I've taken the plunge and bought an SSD and want to move my existing Windows installation over. The current hard disk is 500Gb, but I've trimmed the contents down to about ~40Gb. I'm transferring it across to a 100Gb SSD and looking for the easiest way just to copy everything across and set the SSD up as a boot device.  I've looked at a few tools like Macrium Reflect, but they don't seem able to restore to a smaller drive. Do I need to go for something like  to do this? I'm trying to avoid scary Linux-based boot utilities if possible, does anyone know of an easier way?
118656
After trying to install both OS during 2 days, I'm confused and getting mad... I have SSD 128 GB and HDD 500 GB both empty. My laptop is Asus K55VM. BIOS support UEFI.  What I have done:   Install new SSD (Samsung 830 128GB) Use GParted on liveCD to create new table of partitions (GPT) and create 3 partitions (in the SSD) for different purposes:   Partition 1: 80 GB (w7);  Partition 2: 30 GB (Ubuntu 12.04 -Just / -);  Partition 3: 10 GB unused (for future extesion of the other partitions)  Install Windows 7 (with UEFI) in Partition 1. This create:   /dev/sda1 -> 100 MB for System (UEFI boot I guess) - FAT32 /dev/sda2 -> 100 MB aprox. for MSR /dev/sda3 -> 79.800 MB aprox. for Windows7 data    In this point everything works fine. I have W7. Now I install Ubuntu 12.04 amd64 (with UEFI) as follows:   Install / in Partition 2 -> /dev/sda4 30 GB ext4, and in the hdd I install /home and swap. I select bootloader in /dev/sda1 (where it's supposed to be the UEFI boot). I install updates and reboot.   Problem: Now just appears grub menu with Ubuntu entries and not Windows 7.  Alternative solution found: When I turn on laptop, before loading GRUB I press ESC key and appear BIOS boot, so I can select to boot the Windows partition, Ubuntu partition, DVD, USB, etc... but I think is not the best way to boot different OS.  I've tried: sudo update-grub2 with no success.  What can I do??
23582
I'm considering getting an SSD drive to run as the primary OS partition.  As I understand, this should provide a substantial improvement in performance.     My question is this: Should I leave the swap file on that drive?     The swap partition will be largely random seeks and so should benefit from the speed.  On the other hand, it will be constantly written to which will wear out the drive faster.
57098
Ok, I want to do a "paranoid" migration from a a HDD to a SSD. There will be no shrinking involved.  For the moment this is what I know/have:   Connect SSD and create an 1MB aligned partition, at least the size of the C: from the HDD Clone C: to SSD using Easeus DiskCopy in DOS mode Use a small linux distro and byte-compare source and clone: cmp /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 just to make sure that everything is perfectly copied. (I've personally encountered a situation where Macrium Reflect Free did not clone byte perfect, after comparing manually the files.)   Now here comes the part which I don't know:   Make the new cloned partition bootable, since the alignment was changed. How? I've seen these, but not sure:  bootrec /fixboot bootrec /fixmbr bcdboot c:\windows  Change the disk ID, so there will be no collisions in case you connect both the HDD and the SSD at the same time Are there other things to consider?   I'm aiming to make this as safe and as reliable as possible, so any advice is welcome.
5661
I recently have upgraded my PC, my new Motherboard (ASUS M5A99X EVO) uses UEFi instead of the regular MBR option.  I have a Ubuntu 11.10 installation that I did when I had my previous hardware (MSI MS 7267) , Ubuntu alone boots fine, and so does Windows 7, however Windows 7 is using UEFI (GPT) boot whereas Ubuntu is using MBR.  I have my OSs in separate drives, so that GRUB2 wont' get replaced by the Windows Bootloader and viceversa, as I said both OSs boot fine on their own, but to do that I have to disconnect one drive in this case the Ubuntu drive as it prevents Windows from loading.  Now my question is, How can I change/convert Ubuntu's drive so that instead of using MBR it uses GPT and allow Windows to boot?.   Preferably without reinstalling the whole system or lose any data.  And if I were to wipe the drive, How can I install Ubuntu in GPT, UEFI, whatever it is mode?.  I have used gdisk to convert from MBR to GPT, but now Ubuntu can't boot seems like grub just doesn't start.  I have re installed the OS, and the drive is GPT now by default however grup-pc is still being used instead of grub-efi.  How can i make Ubuntu boot from EFI?.
88260
ubuntu 14.04 installed on 128Gb ssd zfs pool ("zfshome") across 3x3TB disks, containing audio/video/tv etc.  I originally built this as a nas4free NAS serving my windows boxes around the house.I'm now tryin to turn it into a media server,and being always on,wanted the stabilty of ubuntu,(now that it's more user friendly, in terms of normal users...) Tt seems to me that putting /home/user on the zpool made sense,(being a newby I do frequent reinstalls), but after a week  I cannot find clear instructions how to achieve it, and after so many attempts am thoroughly confused.  Any help appreciated, Ian
25477
I have a Laptop with 1TB hard disk space. I can allocate 100GB for Ubuntu. Currently there is only Windows 7 installed. I am new to Ubuntu &amp; am confused by terms like mount point, root partition, swap partition, etc. The doc over  gives some details, but I dont know what they mean. For installing Ubuntu I have shrunk 100GB from a drive &amp; now that space is unallocated. So what should I do now? In how many partitions should I divide that space &amp; what conventions should be followed. Should I do this in the Ubuntu installer or should I do all this before installing Ubuntu? Please I dont understand the terminologies used on that doc so please tell me in simple language. Thank You.
14207
I am trying to migrate my current C drive with Windows 10 installed (250GB M.2 SSD) to a 1TB M.2 SSD. Both are physically installed in my PC.  I used Macrium Reflect to clone the drive to the new SSD, which was successful as they were both identical (except the extra unallocated space in the new drive). I made sure that the new drive was GPT.  I then restarted, and in the boot menu changed the boot priority to the 1TB SSD, with the 250GB SSD as second priority. The boot mode is in UEFI.  However, it didn't work and when booting, the windows icon was still next to the 250GB SSD meaning it had booted from that drive.  I then opened my PC and physically disconnected the 250GB SSD. When I started up the computer again it gave me a "Recovery - your PC needs to be repaired" error, so obviously it was not able to boot from the 1TB drive at all and was going into recovery mode instead when it couldn't find the second priority boot.   I then reconnected the 250GB SSD, but instead of booting it in second priority, I disabled it in the boot menu. But this still didn't work and windows is still booting from this drive (evidenced by the windows icon next to it).  I am at a loss as to why even after disabling it in the boot menu it is still booting from this drive and why cloning, setting the new drive as GPT and ensuring it is booting in UEFI doesn't seem to be working. I've spent hours googling this and am at a loss! Any tips would be greatly appreciated!  Thanks
58119
Is it possible to put the entire operating system on a ram disk? If I have 16 GB of RAM and it is an Intel Xeon. I don't have an SSD and my hard drive is killing my boot time. So can I just allocate some of my ram to work as if it were an SSD and install windows and vital software on it, to gain super fast speed. Or is it more trouble then its worth and would be better off just buying an SSD?
116973
I recently purchased an SSD to speed up my computer experience. Before, I had Windows 7 and Ubuntu in a dual-boot system. The plan was to install Windows 8 on the SSD and then set aside ~30GB for the system files of Ubuntu.  I installed Windows 8 just fine on the SSD, then I booted the Ubuntu install CD to make my partitions like always - but GParted tells me the entire SSD is unallocated. Now I am afraid I will lose my Windows installation if I try to do anything to it.  Why does GParted think there is no partition on the SSD? Shouldn't it be 4 Partitions, like the Windows installer told me?  And is it possible to ignore this and install Ubuntu on the hard disk (where it, frankly, already is) and somehow make it possible to install GRUB on the SSD to revert my dual-boot system without damaging the installed Win8?
30858
I'm tring to install Ubuntu 13.04 on my PC desktop but when i restart my PC, it always starts Windows 7, without asking me which OS would i like to run. I've got 3 HDD on my PC:     1: 200 GB with Win7   2: 500 GB partitioned with 4 GB of Swap, 150 GB of /home and the others GB of root (/)   3: 2 TB of various data.   I think the bootloader is on sda1, and during the installation of Ubuntu 13.04 I can't install a bootloader on that partition (fatal error). What should i do?  Here my log of fdisk:  ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l  Disk /dev/sda: 203.9 GB, 203928109056 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders, total 398297088 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xdf56df56     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1   *          63   398296937   199148437+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT  WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdc'! The util fdisk doesn't     support GPT. Use GNU Parted.   Disk /dev/sdc: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sdc1               1  3907029167  1953514583+  ee  GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.  Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x272196e3     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sdb1            2046     7815167     3906561    5  Extended /dev/sdb2         7815168   300785663   146485248   83  Linux /dev/sdb3       300785664   976771071   337992704   83  Linux /dev/sdb5            2048     7815167     3906560   82  Linux swap / Solaris
19259
I have Ubuntu 14.04 with a lot of packages and work related stuff that I am very happy with it. It is installed on my main SSD drive which is a 120GB one (I had choosen "/" when I installed ubuntu, so I beleive everything should be on this drive). It shows up as /dev/sda  Now I have added another SSD to my computer which is a 240Gb. I do not have any other storage media at hand at the moment (e.g. external hard drive).   Since the new 240GB drive has obviously more capacity and is faster (a newer generation than my 120GB one), I want to move my Linux to this new drive. This new drive shows up as /dev/sdb and at the moment it is not formatted or anything (I have literally unpackaged and inserted in my PC right now :P)  How can I safely move my linux installation to the new drive?  I can change the SATA cable so the new drive shows as /dev/sda if necessary.  This is the output of "fdisk -l" if that helps:  Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00076d7a     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1   *        2048   226064383   113031168   83  Linux /dev/sda2       226066430   234440703     4187137    5  Extended Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary. /dev/sda5       226066432   234440703     4187136   82  Linux swap / Solaris  Disk /dev/sdb: 240.1 GB, 240057409536 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 29185 cylinders, total 468862128 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000  Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
20896
A person has a computer with no HDD but 16GB RAM and USB3 port.  Also has 16GB USB3 pendrive with Ubuntu Live on it, (Non persistent).  The computer is then started with the pendrive using toram.  The pendrive is then removed and reinserted while the O/S is running.  Is the O/S that is running in RAM able to do a "Full" install to the pendrive?  This was asked in:     However for some reason this unique question was marked as "Duplicate".
20817
I have purchased a new SSD (120GB) and I had a HDD (1TB) already installed. I will install both Ubuntu and Windows on these drives. As the file space on the SSD is limited and I've read that writing to an SSD drive is discouraged, I would like to store most of the data on the HDD drive. I am aiming at faster system but also keeping the valuable data safe on the more reliable HDD and expanding the life span of the SSD.  I have already set up Windows on these drives (system files and applications on SSD, Users folder and ProgramData on HDD) and now it's time to set up Ubuntu.  So my question is which partitions I should create, on which drive should they be placed and how large they should be.  Based on my experience and articles I've read, I will probably create /swap, /home and / partitions.   Does it seem reasonable to place /swap and /home partitions on the HDD and / on the SSD?  And how large should / partition be?  Also, will the applications be installed in / partition? If so, is it rational to store the applications on separate partitions on the HDD instead of / on the SSD, and what should the size of the / partition be in this case?
46506
I'm installing ubuntu onto a new laptop with 24gb SSD and a 500gb HDD. I wanted to put / and swap onto the SSD and /home onto the HDD. Is there anything I shouldn't use ext4 for?  I do not ever intend to dual boot. Ubuntu only.