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    #1

    [RESOLVED] Installer unable to format drive.

    Alright, so, I decided to try Linux. I currently use Windows 10 on a 4tb Samsung SSD. I didn't want to erase that so I grabbed a spare drive, sadly, the 1tb SSD I had had fried at some point, so all I had was a 4tb WD Black HDD (yes, spinning rust. >.< ) . So I swapped things around, made the 4tb HDD as SATA 1, the Samsung 4tb as Sata 2, and the two remaining drives (another WD and a Seagate, both 8tb HDDs ) were left as Sata 3 and 4. I was testing Mint on the 4tb WD for a bit but decided to give Plasma a whirl. Downloaded Kubuntu 25.04 AMD64 Iso, tested it in Virtual Box, liked what I saw, used Balen Etcher to burn the ISO onto a 16gb thumb drive, rebooted into the thumb drive , got up to the partition part, and at first it was detecting my 8tb Seagate external HDD as SDA . So a restart, unplug the 8tb external, and vola, the 4tb WD was detected as SDA. In the options (Install onto, erase disk, manual partitioning ) I told it to erase, verified the info it presented, and clicked continue, through account creation, to installation and it crashed. Umm, I can't post screen shots can I? Ok, well, let's see...

    Installation failed

    The installer failed to create partition on disk "WDC WD4003FZEX-00Z4SA0"

    Details
    Create a new partition(3.64 Tib, ext4) on '/dev/sda'
    job: Create new partition on device '/dev/sda'
    Command: sfdisk -force -- append /dev/sda
    Failed to add partition 'New Partition' to device '/dev/sda'
    Failed to add partition 'New Partition' to device '/dev/sda'

    Why I had to repeat the last twice, no idea. I also tried to do it manually on the second go around but there was a few missing options. No 'gpt' partition nor 'efi' / 'esp' partition. My system is UEFI, this is an Asus X370 Prime Pro board with a Ryzen 5700x processor, and the Mint install was an EFI boot partition plus root partition. So I am at a bit of a loss on why Mint could install fine but Kubuntu was like 'nope'. Tried twice, both times it just crashed with the above error. Let's see here, full hardware specs at a guess, since I can't do system info, don't have it installed yet to get system info.

    Ryzen 7 5700x CPU
    Asus Prime X370 Pro
    Radeon RX 6800xt
    32gb DDR 4
    Sata 1 : WD Black 4tb HDD
    Sata 2: Samsung Evo 870 4tb SSD
    Sata 3: WD Black 8tb HDD
    Sata 4: Seagate 8tb HDD
    USB 0 : Patriot 16gb thumb drive
    USB 1 : Seagate 8tb external HDD

    The USB # are from the Bios screen. Well, if you need any more information, let me know. I'll reboot out of the live here back into Windows 10 for now, not a whole lot else I can do here. >.<

    Ah ha! Screen shots, just had to upload them to a third party image hosting site.

    What Kubuntu installer wanted to do

    https://i.vgy.me/kEm5IB.jpg

    Error Tab 1

    https://i.vgy.me/RnVwzW.jpg

    Error Tab 2

    https://i.vgy.me/G4kH1e.jpg
    Last edited by llloyd; Yesterday, 07:18 PM.
    Tags: install
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    #2
    As to your question about this post being 'Unapproved'.

    It isn't because you are a 'newbie' here. If certain criteria are present in a post, it gets set as 'Unapproved', meaning it needs Administrator approval. I've approved your post.

    We do this out of a need to be cautious. While we no longer see the plethora of spam posts we used to receive, we do still get them. Our rules that decide whether or not a post should be set as "Unapproved" serve us well in this regard, but even with them, some spam posts get through. Posts that get set as "Unapproved" allow us (Administrators) to look at them and either approved or delete them (delete when it is judged to be spam or contains content that is unacceptable here).

    I hope this explains it for you, and that you weren't/aren't offended. Not our intent.

    So, Welcome to KFN!
    Windows no longer obstruct my view.
    Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
    "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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      #3
      Originally posted by Snowhog View Post
      As to your question about this post being 'Unapproved'.

      It isn't because you are a 'newbie' here. If certain criteria are present in a post, it gets set as 'Unapproved', meaning it needs Administrator approval. I've approved your post.

      We do this out of a need to be cautious. While we no longer see the plethora of spam posts we used to receive, we do still get them. Our rules that decide whether or not a post should be set as "Unapproved" serve us well in this regard, but even with them, some spam posts get through. Posts that get set as "Unapproved" allow us (Administrators) to look at them and either approved or delete them (delete when it is judged to be spam or contains content that is unacceptable here).

      I hope this explains it for you, and that you weren't/aren't offended. Not our intent.

      So, Welcome to KFN!
      Oh! Ok. Thank you for approving of the post. And, no, not offended, just curious. I post hundreds of messages to many forums over the years (I go back to the Dos era when you posted onto a BBS that you connected to at 2400 baud. >.< ) and was a bit puzzled and curious to the no screen shot rule as that is the best way to show an error screen that can't be copied and pasted. Especially if it's a long complicated error that typing out verbatim will most definitely lead to critical errors. Thankfully the above is a short error but still... Again, thank you for the approval and, hopefully, someone out there can figure out why the installer is crashing. Presently I am without an SDA partition with Win 10 on SDB. Unsure if I'd need to continue to go into the UEFI boot menu every time I wanted / needed to reboot. Best is to just figure out the problem with Kubuntu installer and get it installed. Again, thank you for your time.
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        #4
        Given the information you provided, you are a knowledgeable user. Kudos!

        I would suggest trying to install again, and ensuring you choose Manual so you can set up the drive manually. Ensure you choose gpt for the partition table. The key is the create a 300.00 MiB fat32 partition with the mount point set to /boot/efi, and setting the boot flag on it. The rest of the space on the drive can be partitioned as you like.

        A screenshot of my KDE neon installation in a VirtualBox VM:

        Click image for larger version Name: Screen Shot 2025-06-20 at 11.52.43 AM.png Views: 0 Size: 97.4 KB ID: 687166

        Windows no longer obstruct my view.
        Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
        "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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          #5
          Uh , well, switched to 24.04 LTS (I remembered that your dev cycle is 5 years, like Win 10 LTS is from 2021 unlike , say, Pro. An Enterprise thing) . Did as you suggested, argued with the installer (It kept popping up a warning or suggestion or something telling me to switch the partition table to GPT when I had done just that) a bit, got it to install. Rebooted, and it booted right into Windows 10. Reboot , F8 to go into the UEFI boot up, only thing listed is the Windows Boot Manager, no Kubuntu. O.o So, uh, how odd?

          https://i.vgy.me/4TKZKb.jpg

          https://i.vgy.me/IiET0h.jpg
          Last edited by llloyd; Yesterday, 01:02 PM. Reason: Broken links, Vgy offers options for Markdown, BB Code, HTML, etc, I copied the wrong ones. >.<
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            #6
            You have made enough posts now, you will be able to post/upload images to your posts.
            Windows no longer obstruct my view.
            Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
            "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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              #7
              Originally posted by llloyd View Post
              (It kept popping up a warning or suggestion or something telling me to switch the partition table to GPT when I had done just that)
              It's actually just a 'reminder'. If you already did it, you just proceed.
              Windows no longer obstruct my view.
              Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
              "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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                #8
                Originally posted by Snowhog View Post
                It's actually just a 'reminder'. If you already did it, you just proceed.
                Ah! Ok. I wasn't sure, felt like if you had it shouldn't need to remind you, but, hey ho. At least I know now. >.< Now to figure out why my partition setup is so broken that UEFI boot doesn't even see it. O.o
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                  #9
                  Update: Ok. I was going to go into the live environment to poke at SDA when the UEFI Boot menu showed SDA up. So I was able to boot into it successfully. Though things are running a bit sluggish, it was a number of minutes between clicking Update in Discover and when it started to updated. Very likely due to it being on spinning rust, but, hey ho. At least it's working, I hope. I did update-grub and hopefully, as I am about to reboot this after updating. So, yay, I think I can close this off.

                  Code:
                  llloyd@Nyeri:~$ sudo update-grub
[sudo] password for llloyd:
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub'
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-6.11.0-17-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-6.11.0-17-generic
Found memtest86+x64 image: /boot/memtest86+x64.bin
Warning: os-prober will be executed to detect other bootable partitions.
Its output will be used to detect bootable binaries on them and create new boot entries.
Found Windows 7 on /dev/sdd2
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
done
llloyd@Nyeri:~$​
​
                  Update 2: Well, resolved, sort of. On rebooting it vanished again, checked BIOS, it wasn't even showing up in the Boot menu to let me set it as boot from first with Win 10 to boot from second so... I'll dig through my drawer of drives (I'm a pack rat. >.<) and find another suitable candidate and start over. >.< * grumbles *
                  Last edited by llloyd; Yesterday, 07:20 PM.
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