Hello all,

I am indeed a big fan of the search button, and I'm sure this has been 'solved' a few times, but due to the complexity of search string it's hard to find the exact answer.

I'm running Mint 20.2 on an older machine; I have an M2 SSD stick plugged into a PCIe via an adapter. The machine sees it just fine, and I can format, partition, etc, but BIOS cannot boot from it. (only boot from legacy SATA)

So, I'd like to put just the bare bones boot files on the SATA drive, with the majority of OS and other progs on the M2 NVMe.

I've tried variations in the install, like 'something else' then selecting boot loader on the SATA, but Im not getting it quite right. Keep getting warnings...

What 'mount point' option(s) should I select, on which? Do I need to make a specific boot partition on the SATA? Particular name?

Thanks!!

PS- I am not trying to dual boot or anything similar. Just straight linux only.

You're doing a non-standard installation so you will need to use the manual option (Something Else) and create a boot partition on the SATA drive, 500MB should be large enough labelled boot. Then create a root filesystem partition on the SSD and it needs to have the label "/" without quotes as the system partition.

You keep getting warnings but didn't post what they are so no one will be able to help with that.

Format the boot partition on the sata drive ext4 and mount at /boot, the partition on the ssd mount at /, select the sata drive for the bootloader.

If you're booting via UEFI (I know you said legacy, but JUST in case), then you'd want

small (like 150-500 MB, that's it) ESP/FAT32 partition on what's probably /dev/sda1 mounted to /boot/efi
After that, any further partitions go ahead and put on /dev/nvme0n1p... however you like, either everything in 1 giant /, or split them out, up to you.

If you're booting via MBR, then you'll want

/boot partition mounted on /dev/sda1. This doesn't need to be HUGE, but probably 500MB+
After that, any further partitions go ahead and put on /dev/nvme0n1p... however you like, either everything in 1 giant /, or split them out, up to you.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for fast replies!

(For clarification, the SATA is SSD as well, so Ill refer to it as 'SATA' vs 'NVME' for the M2 stick.)

I did all that previously, attached screen shot. Maybe some other detail necessary. I've done it many different ways, trial and error and hard to keep track of when I get what after exactly what I tried but...

On reboot I either get an 'unknown filesystem' w grub rescue or just a flashing cursor.
I get the 'no partition table changes and no creation of file system planned...' error, but I read that is just a standard warning about not wiping the disk first?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wv_...ew?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wv_...ew?usp=sharing

I formatted both drives entirely (overwrite w 0's) and did fresh. Now I get a 'the partition table format in use on your disk normally requires you to create separate partition for boot loader code...'. I've searched that but found things only pertaining to Windows dual boot, not sure how to translate.


This is on a 2011 optiplex 990 w A18 bios. The bios does have a UEFI option, and it sees the NVME w linux installed from BIOS UEFI menu, but wont boot from it (tried installing all linux on it previously). I'm staying with legacy.

check the format boxes. install bootloader to /dev/sda

colorpurple: tried that previously, doesnt matter. I get a ''the partition table format in use on your disk normally requires you to create separate partition for boot loader code...reserved bios boot area...'.

Well.. after a few more times diddling w it, it worked. I didnt do anything different than a few times before. Maybe something wasnt over-written correctly. Thanks to all.

This indicates that sda drive type is gpt.
If I had to guess, somewhere in your diddling the sda was changed to dos type drive.

I continued install with that warning and it worked. But yes, I can be a dubious, occasionally deleterious, though often dynamic diddler, and the DOS drive was one such department.

Thanks again.