I bought a very cheap Asus with Mint on it and when visiting my local PC emporium I got the chap to swap the HDD for a 256GB SSD. He checked out the system with windows (he’s a Windows only man). Months later I get back to the Asus for the first time and it won’t let me boot a Live USB (despite changing the boot priority) and demanded that I register Windows.
I extracted the device to a carrier and plugged it into a USB port on my Lenovo T500 laptop. The response was: Unable to mount 255 GB Volume
Error mounting /dev/sdb2 at /media/keith/FA24921C2491DC47: Command-line `mount -t “ntfs” -o “uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000” “/dev/sdb2” “/media/keith/FA24921C2491DC47”’ exited with non-zero exit status 14: Windows is hibernated, refused to mount.
Failed to mount ‘/dev/sdb2’: Operation not permitted
The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown
Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume
read-only with the ‘ro’ mount option.
Not understanding all this and impetuous as ever I decided to reformat it, not thinking that I would need a boot sector, etc. So I now have a single Ext4 partition on it. Plugging it back into the ASUS I tried to boot from an Ubuntu 18 live USB but the system just hung with a black screen.
I’ve looked on line for how to partition the SSD but the instructions imply some knowledge that I don’t have.
I’ve been very foolish but would be grateful for help in formatting it correctly (in a carrier USB’d to my Laptop) so that I can return it to the ASUS and Install Ubuntu 18.
All the usual POST messages appear but then at the point when one would expect it to boot from the USB the screen goes blank with a flashing cursor (I ought to have been more accurate!).
No, I don’t know about nomodeset - how does one do that?
The external label says: A5 P6-P5G41E BLA and the board label says: PQ5PL10T/P6-P5G41E/DP_MB. There is nothing else.
The BIOS makes no mention of UEFI that I recall.
I made the Live USB on my Lenovo T500 laptop by downloading the ISO then using “USB Stick Writer” to create it. It works fine on other machines and I’ve also tried a Mint 18 Live USB with the same, null result.
Okay I’m not 100% sure the ASUS is capable of booting a LiveUSB … though the BIOS does mention “Removeablve dev”
So you’re right, it may be easier to preinstall on the Lenovo T500, which can.
Which OS is currently on the T500 ?
And I’m not aware of any application that presents itself as “USB Stick Writer” … on Ubuntu there’s normally “Startup Disk Creator” which IIRC is broken.
On Mint there is “USB Image Writer”
You say you’ve tested the LiveUSB on another PC and it booted ?
If that’s the case, when you hit F12 on the T500 is the USB stick listed as a bootable device ?
Err, no: The SSD has nothing on it. Now don’t laugh, but I formatted it using what’s listed in System Tools as “USB Stick Formatter” which I think is Mintstick that you recommended. And Gparted shows, as expected, that it has just the one partition.
(By the way: the original HHD works fine in the ASUS - Ubuntu 18 - so the machine is OK)
With the SSD in the carrier and USB’d to the T500: fdisk -l
keith@T500:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for keith:
Disk /dev/loop0: 88.5 MiB, 92778496 bytes, 181208 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
Your other questions:
The T500 is running Ubuntu 16.04
I used Mintstick to format the SSD (listed as “USB Stick Formatter” in the menu)
The Ubuntu 18 and Mint 18 Live USBs work fine on my T500
Hitting F12 with the Ubuntu 18 USB inserted in the T500 has no response - or do you mean doing this while booting the T500?
Looking at how easy it is to remove the HDD from a T500
Wouldn’t the easiest way to do this be to simply
take out the HDD from the T500 and place it safely aside.
Insert the SSD into the T500
Boot the T500 from an Ubuntu/Mint LiveUSB
Install Ubuntu/Mint onto the SSD using the automated defaults (overwrite entire drive).
(BTW, probably best NOT to select “download updates during the install”)
when done shut down
move the SSD to the ASUS
replace the HDD into the T500
No having to do any manual partitioning, and no putting the T500 drive at risk if you get anything wrong.
Wonderful! That worked a treat.
Just for interest: Is there a way of formatting a disk so it can be used as a system disk i.e. with boot sector etc, without swapping discs.
You don’t need to ‘format’ a drive in a particular way to add the bootsector (on Legacy BIOS systems)… but if you’re installing to a second HDD (as you were), you’d need to tell the installer (Ubiquity) to place the bootloader on the MBR of the second HDD, otherwise it’d get written to the first.
It’s easy enough to do, but different for different distros/versions.
I mean I could explain how to do it for say Ubuntu 18.04, but that aint gonna apply to Manjaro (or even Ubuntu 16.04 which uses a swap partition as opposed to a swap file in 18.04).
Basically choose “Something Else” at the partitioning section of Ubiquity, then it will ask you to set up the partitions, and where you want the bootloader (which in your case would LIKELY have been /dev/sdb … note sdb NOT sdb1)
I’ve crossed that out, not because it’s ‘wrong’, but because it’d be specific to a users system, and I don’t want to post something that if misunderstood could make their other OS’s unbootable.
The reason I suggested the method I did was because it was the SAFEST method
