Trouble with Ubuntu installation on USB HD

eagle012 · 01-10-2007, 08:24 PM

I am attempting to install ubuntu 6.06 to my external HD, and when I chose to install it on the hard drive it begins and thens says there is an error in creating the file system and then begins to detect file systems and does not go any further than that. Any idea what the problem is?

J.W. · 01-10-2007, 11:50 PM

Welcome to LQ. Do you have available, unallocated space on your external drive into which you can install Linux? In other words, if your external drive is 80G, and it contains an 80G NTFS partition, there's no place to put Linux. Even if you only have 10G of data in that 80G partition, all of it has already been allocated.

It would be helpful for you to post the output of the following command, which will list your existing partitions (be sure the external drive is connected)

Code:

fdisk -l

Note that's a lowercase "L"

eagle012 · 01-11-2007, 09:26 AM

thanks, I am very new to linux. where would I post that output? And if it was allocated to an NTFS partition, do I do a manual partition then?

J.W. · 01-11-2007, 09:34 PM

The "fdisk -l" command will just list some basic info about your hard drives. Example, using my PC

Code:

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          12       96358+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2              13        2444    19535040   83  Linux
/dev/hda3            2445        4876    19535040   83  Linux
/dev/hda4            4877       19457   117121882+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5            4877        7308    19535008+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6            7309       19426    97337803+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7           19427       19457      248976   82  Linux swap / Solaris

With "fdisk -l", you are not actually making any changes to your hard drive and/or partitions; instead you're just listing some info about how it's partitioned. Just run the command, then copy and paste the output in your post