That's some great info. Ye, the surface might be one issue.. anyways, some things to look into, . Yes I think the hub may be an issue. The surface only has one port unfortunately. maybe the USB 3 ports on the Dell aren't up to to the task either.. I've tried partitioning 1 drive or using 2 external drives. It's the consistent same results I get, on 2 distros,2 laptops,every time, no matter what I do... hub, no hub, partition, no partition etc etc that gets me thinking..?? Scratching my head Cheers!
Last edited by planemad; November 6th, 2024 at 03:23 AM.
Not all flash drives are compatible with all USB ports and not all are able to support booting. This is less an issue on recent laptops (from about 2017), but prior to then, it wasn't uncommon to find that some flash drives couldn't be used for installations. I had luck with cheap and expensive "brand name" flash drives. Also had some bad luck with some cheap and expensive name brand flash drives, so there's no way to know, except to try them out. Also, be certain that the BIOS in the computer is up to date AND that any Intel RAID options in the BIOS are disabled. You want AHCI for all storage.
The surface only has one port unfortunately How would you use rufus to create a bootable usb, then try to boot that usb and install your chosen Linux to another usb if you have only one usb port?? Best give up on that and stick with the other machine. Using a hub to connect the second usb is just going to complicate things. You could boot the usb and use the toram option on booting the usb if you have enough RAM (unknown to us) and the usb is large enough but that is a little too convoluted for this case so best to stick with the Dell. I've tried partitioning 1 drive or using 2 external drives. What does that mean? Some of your posts seem to indicate you have successfully written the Linux iso to a usb and have booted it and are having problems installing it. What does partitioning drives have to do with the situation. Are you trying to install from a usb you created with rufus to another usb or from a usb you created with rufus to to an external hard drive? How about booting the usb on which you have Ubuntu or whichever Linux you are now using, the one created with rufus and opening a terminal and running the command I suggested earlier to show drive/partition information. Both usb drives attached when you run it. [QUOTEI don't want to delete windows] [/QUOTE] How would you delete windows if you are installing from one usb to another usb? Are you familiar with naming conventions in Linux so you can identify different hard drives or usb drives.
With all this trouble, why not just skip using dual boot and go for a virtual machine install instead? Then you can practice doing as many installations and seeing them work a few times before going back to your desired "carry-with-me" Linux solution. I've been running my main Linux desktop inside a virtual machine since around 2008. It is very portable and has been through base hardware and OS changes multiple times. Using VMs skips all the local hardware issues.
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