rblampain,

If you wish to preserve W11 on the original drive, it may be better to use the blank(?) drive #2.

For UEFI boot the drive must be formatted as GPT, with a small FAT 32 esp partition, which MUST be flagged as boot and esp.

Three more Linux partitions are also created.

See METHOD TWO (No existing drive partitions) for full details:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...al-boot-38956/

Then follow the instructions for METHOD ONE, using "Something Else" and the 4 Primary partitions that have just been created.

Personally I would use Linux Mint MATE in this instance as opposed to Debian, but it's your choice.

Windows gave an option to reinstall itself which I did. Checking the settings after the new install I found that Windows or Dell had kept the AHCI setting (RAID is not enabled).

Assuming my USB containing Debian could be the problem, I purchased 3 new 16GB USB sticks and copied my ISO download of Debian to one as per instructions given by TBOne knowing that it had to be written to the drive and not to one of its possible partitions (which the new USB does not have).
I had read somewhere that the "cp" command is not suitable for the job because it does not write from the first "cylinder" (Cylinder 0?) of the device and does the same on a USB drive (misses the MBR?) but they boot successfully on other machines regardless of whether the ISO has been "cp" od "dd".

I tested the new USB stick on the Linux Lenovo on which it was created (no Windows there) and, just like the stick I used before, the graphical install option (and others) to install Linux came up proving that there is nothing wrong with the USB sticks I used.

But trying it on the Dell 3460, having also inserted a DVD of Debian ISO, gives exactly the same result as before. There is a lot of hand-shaking done between the PC, the USB and the DVD drive but the drives, including the 2 SSD drives, look invisible to Linux.

There may be one peculiarity to the distro I am trying to install that hinder the result although I doubt it.
I only have Wifi to download any distro which means that the first driver necessary is the one that enables Wifi (Wlwifi) and the distro is called "firmware.." and appears to be Debian 10 rather than Debian 11 but is from Debian.

I am still convinced that the Windows forums I previously mentioned hit the nail on the head as according to them, the Bios looks for a Windows registry line to be changed for Linux to see the drives, a line that may be left changed if the user does not mind losing Windows but has to be restored if the user wants to keep it.
According to these people, changing the settings from RAID to AHCI is not enough.
I was simply hoping that someone had experienced that problem and able to add a bit of clarification but it also appears that RST being considered bad practice, it is a subject untouched by experienced Linux users.

rblampain,

In all my time booting various Linux OSs in UEFI mode, I have found that it is necessary for a bare (or unformatted) drive to be formatted as GPT, with a small FAT 32 esp (500MiB) partition, which MUST be flagged as boot and esp.

Then format 3 more Linux partitions for root, swap and home.

Yep; gave them the owners manual in post #5 and the same user manual in post #17. Didn't do much good. OP claims to have started with Debian 9, then somehow used dd to write Debian 11 to a USB stick formatted as FAT32. When the Debian instructions tell you what/how to write a bootable USB drive, and you also have other tools available to make bootable sticks.

My guess? OP didn't make the USB device (whatever it is; started with CD, went to DVD, now its a flash-stick) bootable or didn't create the install media correctly. They won't provide details about the hardware (a PCI SSD Card? Assuming it's an NVMe to PCI adapter, for what point I don't know when a standard SATA SSD is cheaper and plugs in directly).

The instructions given by beachboy2 look a bit different to what I thought to be necessary, having never heard before of the GPT file system.

I will try again, following those instructions and I will try MINT as recommended.

As far as TBOne posts are concerned, it seems she/he has not read all the posts or confuses their order and from whom they were.
The problem I have been trying to resolve has always been the same and only appears to be different when one wants to give it that appearance.
As far as the disk drives of the machine are concerned, they are 2 x 512GB SSD plugging directly into the Mobo, I have to open the machine to find which exactly. The manual ("36 pages" having been mentioned by someone else - I never checked that) shows 2 types, 1 short-looking one and a long-looking thin one (drawings - not photos), it is the long thin one.

I also bought a new SSD "card" (drive) which I tried as explained in another post about my inability to install Linux on this machine, post which generated far less interest than this one - this post being initially about booting from an external device which in turn was a curiosity rather than a problem to fix. In other words, I am getting advice in this thread/posts on how to fix a problem reported in another post, this was unexpected but is most welcome.

My expectation was that Windows would be on drive 1 and drive 2 would have been empty but if all the drives have been formatted by Dell as one RAID unit, Windows could have been spread on all the non-removable.

I do not mind at all loosing Windows OS once it is not necessary anymore to boot Linux.

It seems that, as beachboy2 hinted, there is a single nagging point, still unidentified, that seems obvious to the pros answering my question but completely unexpected to a user of my low experience but absolutely vital to obtain the result wanted.

Secure Boot and Fast Boot were disabled by me when I bought the machine and were never enabled anytime I checked the BIOS, if my recollection is correct, there was only one enabled at the factory/vendor.

Having sent the previous post, I realise it is open to misinterpretation. When I say I "never heard about" (the GPT) or other such comment, I mean just that, which is my description of my own ignorance on the subject of which I am not ashamed or apologetic.

It seems there is still some misunderstanding.
Although my initial post was about booting from an external drive, the source problem was my inability or incapacity to install Linux on a Windows machine because I can not boot from the Dell 3460 CD/DVD or USB media and that appeared to be understood by those who answered first although it may not have been.

Formatting any drive of the desktop can only be done if I can boot an OS from CD/DVD or USB and I did not "try" Debian 9, I simply thought that the failure of the system to detect the presence of the Debian 9 CD when trying to boot from the USB was proof that booting from either did not work.
Although I could be wrong, the fact that Debian 9 would not netinstall anymore is completely irrelevant.

It could well be that the main misunderstanding was my own, in having concluded that it was understood by the readers of the posts that the question I asked about booting from external drive was to solve my inability to boot from the CD or DVD of the machine.

And the first USB stick ISO image I tried had been used without any problem to install Debian on 2 other machines including a Lenovo that does not have a CD drive (Lenovo used to send these posts).

I hope this clarifies any possible misunderstanding.

This maybe because of missing firmware that didn’t come with debian 9 iso.
Give debian 12 @ try. I believe debian 12 comes with the firmware.

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No, the CD was in the drive as a test. I have Debian 11 installed on other machines as it is also available with all the firmware including firmware necessary to netinstall through WIFI.

I mention in one of the posts that Windows gave an opportunity to select another boot option but required a file when such option was selected. Lately, I thought may be the wanted file could have been the Debian ISO filename on the USB stick so I gave that a try but with no luck as when that option is selected, Windows presents a few files of its own, it does not allow the user to select another.

In your searching did you come across this: https://www.dell.com/community/Preci...n/td-p/7882070

If you are just plugging in the usb drive and expecting the computer to boot it, that would only work if you've modified the bios settings to make usb the first boot device.

Does F12 bring up the menu to select boot device or not? This is where you'd select the USB drive or optical drive.

Been suggested to the OP several times; still no idea if they tried it or not. They've been pointed to the manual, given options, and asked about the hardware (saying things like "new SSD card drive" is near meaningless), but won't tell us specifics. Looking up that brand/model, it doesn't appear anyone else has problems, and even Dell says it supports Linux:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...40-workstation

The OP hints at formatting things FAT32, then using DD to write a Debian image; the Debian website even tells you how to create it, and dd isn't involved.

That is the point, no matter what you change in the BIOS and regardless of the key pressed to access the BIOS, the option to boot form CD/DVD or USB are NEVER - NEVER offered, they simply do not exist in any shape or form.

The boot options are Windows or IPV4 or IPV6 or the cloud or "add" boot option.

My last attempt was following something on the net in which one suggested to "supply" (or a similar term) "CD/DVD/USB" when DELL 3460 (specifically referred to by that writer) BIOS offers to "add" a boot option which does not work at all unless it is a string recognised and accepted by Windows.

I thought, I had explained that in the early posts but as the problem remains unresolved, it's easy to run in circle.

I have tried replacing the M2 SSD expected to hold the OS but, being proprietary and although a new m2 ssd fits, it is not recognised. My next and probably last attempt will be, if spare cables allow, to add a spare SSD (not M2) I have with Linux installed but I am pretty sure it wont solve the problem even if it makes the PC do something different.

In one of the posts, I explain that at one stage I had an obsolete (but working) Debian 9 ISO on DVD in the CD/DVD drive and in my hope to destroy the machine, I kept cutting of the power by removing the power plug. Surprisingly, in one of those the gui inslall screen of Debian 9 came on the screen, but never repeated, and since then after loading, Windows shows a document icon called "grub.cfg" and asks me if I want to delete it which seems to indicate that the machine is able to boot from CD/DVD or USB but is prevented to do so by BIOS and Windows.

Trying to install Debian from USB sticks has been done in many forms, "dd" being only one of them and sticks being FAT32, lately I have tried Debian 12 from DVD and it installed with no problem on another machine but gives the same result on the DELL. This was on the assumption that the DVD would be easier to detect by any BIOS.

A few weeks after purchasing the machine, Dell sent me an email asking to tell how happy I was about the purchase. Knowing that such exchange is analysed by software, I tried to be as succinct and clear as possible about what I wanted to do with the machine and never got an answer, not even a "generic" acknowledgement.

My conclusion which could be wrong is that Dell erroneously set up the machine for RAID and mangled the BIOS accordingly even though I was allowed to select AHCI over RAID but since Windows work, I have no claim under warranty.

Yes, I tried that. The ports are different on my 3460 (not 3640) but I was hoping something similar could apply, so I tried all the combinations possible (9 x USB ports times copy ISO with GUI and another copy with "dd"), I have a container full of new USB stick) but I bought this DELL 3460 because it has a DVD drive.

I found my own mistake about the acronym GPT laughable, I hope all had a good laugh about it too.

What is the status of this issue now?

rblampain,

Did you actually change from RAID (Intel RST) to AHCI as recommended in post #18?

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