Installling Ubuntu on a Lenovo y500 with hybrid drive

[barrymmm]

I'm having some difficulty getting this to work properly.
I bought a new Lenovo Y500 95412RU. It came with Windoz 8. I tried it out with an open mind and found it to be by far the most annoying OS I've ever tried. Initially, my plan was to dual boot but that was difficult due to W8 'malware protection'. I decided to go with Ubuntu only. I've used Mint on an older machine for a couple of years but Ubuntu looks like a nicer flavour. Time to cut those MS apron strings!
The problem I'm having is with my hard drive. It's a 1tb with 16gb ssd hybrid and after my failed attempt to set up dual booting I'm looking at a total mess on my hard drive. I've got partitions everywhere and I don't know what they all are. I'm looking for advise on how to partition it nice and clean for an ubuntu only install. When I power up at first I get a failed boot and a prompt to retry. then it boots successfully into Ubuntu but it takes a long time.
As it currently sits I've managed to install Ubuntu on the 16gb ssd which I don't believe to be one of my smarter moves. Anyway here's a couple of shots of what I currently see in Gparted.
This is my 16gb ssd


This is my main HDD


As you can see, it's quite a mess.

Any advise is much appreciated.

[PhantomTurtle]

If you want to go with Ubuntu only, and get rid of Windows completely, then simply delete all the partitions you have(windows and Ubuntu) and start fresh. I would put your root folder (/) inside your SSD(/dev/sda), and your home folder (/home) and swap in to your 1TB mechanical drive(/dev/sdb). Additionally this removes all of your windows partitions including the recovery partition, and if you did not receive a Windows 8 DVD, then you will not be able to get Windows back again. I would install Ubuntu on the SSD to get the maximum performance out of your computer. The current partitioning scheme you have is correct. What you want to do is, when you boot into the Live CD, simply remove all the partitions using gparted(this will get rid of all the lenovo and windows partitions), then set up the partitions in the Ubuntu installer for the new install.

-Phantom

[barrymmm]

Hey thanks for the quick reply!
It's similar to what I was thinking. My understanding (guess) is:
/dev/sdb5 is my MS W8 OS install
/dev/sdb9 is where I attempted to install Ubuntu when I was aiming for a dual boot system

/dev/sdb10 is Ubuntu swap space
/dev/sdb6 is some kind of recovery partition by the vender (Lenovo)

/dev/sdb8 is the grub install

/dev/sdb1 – 4 don't know
/dev/sdb7 don't know


What I was thinking of doing is merging sdb5, 6, 8, 9 & 10 into one ext4 partition and install ubuntu there.

Set up /dev/sda (my SSD) as the 16gb linux swap.

I was unsure if it's safe to mess with the other partitions on the HDD. You think it is safe so that means merging all the partitions on the 1tb HDD. Now I need to decide between installing Ubuntu exclusively on the SSD or as I suggested, install on the 1tb HDD and use the SSD as swap. If I load it all onto the SSD then all I would have to do is locate my home folder on the HDD to make sure all data & bookmarks etc are stored there so my SSD should stay clutter free right?


Oops - I just read your post and see You've pretty much answered my question already.

[PhantomTurtle]

You got it. But, I would advise against putting swap on the SSD, because it would be a waste of the SSD and swap, data would be written on to and erased constantly, which is bad for a SSD. Additionally, this would just be a waste of the SSD space. I would recommend installing the root partition to the SSD (this puts your ubuntu install on the SSD), which would give you amazing speed that an SSD is supposed to give you. Then put swap and /home (Where you store all your files and documents) into the HDD.

-Phantom

[oldfred]

Did you clear all the RAID settings? Intel SRT uses RAID somehow to enable the caching of Windows.
Another user posted this with the commands to remove the RAID metadata.

Disable the RAID, it was using the Intel rapid management thingy and telling it to disable the acceleration or the use of the SSD. If you have a different system, just disable the RAID system then install Ubuntu. Once installed you can then re-enable it.
sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sda
sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sdb

You are showing an LVM install? Were you trying a full disk encrypted install?

We do have users later come back and say they have one program or game that they cannot live without and want Windows back. I would suggest backing up efi partition & Windows partition. Does your system let you make recovery set of DVDs from recovery partition. You can do that, but it only restores system to as purchased, usually erasing everything.

I would also suggest installing Ubuntu / (root) into entire SSD. With /home and or data partitions on hard drive.
If you have gpt partitions and are booting with BIOS/CSM mode you will need the tiny 1MB unformatted bios_grub partition. If booting in UEFI mode you need the efi partition. How you boot live installer UEFI or CSM/BIOS is how it installs.

Other Lenovo:
Lenovo Z580 laptop
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2112271
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2117760
Lenovo Ideapad Y500 LiveUSB Problem
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2095063
lenovo u310 - install to SSD
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2129157

[barrymmm]

I diidn't do anything with RAID settings. I don't know anything about them and it doesn't seem to be an issue so I'll disregard that for now.
I didn't try a dectypted install. I think that LVM might have been Lenovo's 'one touch recovery'. Instead of recovery disks there's a small button on the side of the machine that accesses a recovery partition. I've no need for that now
I just deleted and resized partitions to give me fewer but larger partitions.
I installed via USB. In order to do this I had to access the BIOS, disable UEFI, and change the boot device priority to look for the USB first.
My partitions look a lot tidier now as you can see by the attached images.
Screenshot from 2013-04-01 09:22:45.pngScreenshot from 2013-04-01 09:23:05.png
One thing I couldn't seem to manage during the install was to use my HDD (partition labeled as 'data') as the /home directory. I'm looking at several different posts regarding moving it post install. I know it's slightly off topic on this thread but when I figure that out I'll post it back here just to give closure to this thread.

[oldfred]

I leave /home inside my / (root) and only use data partitions, mounted with fstab and link the folders in those partitions back into /home. I use about 9GB of my normal 25GB / (root), so you probably can do the same with a 16GB /, but may have to keep track of use of root. My /home is not large as without data it only has the hidden user settings, but I want those on my SSD also as I assume system uses those more.

Splitting home directory discussion and details:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1811198
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1901437
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...hlight=%2Fdata
Link is on move home but see post by bodhi.zazen on data partition #6
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=325048

If you want to move /home.
To move /home uses rsync- Be sure to use parameters to preserve ownership & permissions
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Pa...ng/Home/Moving

Although many just create the /home partition and reinstall with Something else and choose to mount but not reformat an existing /home.

With large data drives I prefer to have another install of Ubuntu on that drive also. I have many older or new testing installs, so I make sure every drive has at least one working copy of something. I follow this blog's logic but use Ubuntu. My goal is every drive is fully bootable including grub and /home without any other drive. But data is on many drives.

Creating a Dedicated Knoppix Partition for large drives
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux..._partition.htm
Except I have multiple Ubuntu installs and rotate newest install from drive to drive.

[barrymmm]

I had marked this as solved because I thought the solution that oldfred offered (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Pa...ng/Home/Moving) had worked for me. It had created all the new directories on the HDD as I'd hoped yet for some reason they're not being used. In fact, I don't even have permission to use them and my old home directory on the SSD is still in use. I only realised this when I began receiving an error about low space in my root directory. My disk usage analyser confirms this so I've removed the solved status for now.

[oldfred]

Is fstab mounting new /home?

Then it may be user ownership or permissions?
Sometimes there are dmrc errors or permission errors and this has how to correct them:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/dmrcErrors
#Replace all instances of username with your login name or use $USER
sudo chown username:username /home/username/.dmrc
chmod 644 /home/$USER/.dmrc
sudo chown $USER:$USER /home/username

[barrymmm]

Oldfred - you appear to be correct. I'm really happy with the results guys. Thank you.
So here's a summary of what I did:

• MS W8 sucks so I entered the BIOS (F2 at Lenovo logo), disabled UEFI / enabled legacy, and set USB as first boot device.
• Booted via USB into Ubuntu 12.10 live session.
• Removed all available partitions on SSD & HDD and created one ext4 partition of maximum size on each using Gparted.
• Installed Ubuntu 12.10 onto the 16gb SSD drive.
• Booted into the new install on the SSD.
• Altered permissions of my home directory as described at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/dmrcErrors
• Moved home directory onto the 1tb HDD as described at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Pa...ng/Home/Moving
• Booted into live session on USB to run Gparted without any access issues to all partitions.
• Deleted the original 10gb home partition that Ubuntu installed by default on the SSD.
• Moved swap partition to the end of the SSD.
• Increased the size of the root directory to take up the remaining SSD space.
• Booted normally onto the SSD and transferred data & settings etc from old laptop to new home directory.

Note: The BIOS automatically reverts the first boot device to the SSD when rebooting the machine without the USB plugged in so you'll need to enter the bios every time you want to boot from the USB.

My machine is now lightening fast, easy to understand (intuitive), and looks great.