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Trouble with Ubuntu installation on USB HD

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?

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"

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?

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