hello,
the install usb does not see the SSD drive and thinks I have only 4gb of space (which is the RAM) and cannot install. what do I need to do to make it see the SSD? I have no problem erasing the windows completely. this is windows in S (safe) mode and it is utterly unusable. I have wasted about 5 hours with MS support trying to switch out of S mode and have given up.
is there a way to do the install with Gparted?
thanks
S.
you can boot with a live iso and use gparted to completely wipe/format the ssd
Then reboot and hopefully the live iso will see the ssd.
what should I format the SSD to? also what is the best way to setup with a /home on a separate partition? the live usb sets up /home in the same partition as the os by default. so if I use gparted to create two discs then how do I tell ubuntu to use one for the os and the other for /home ??
thanks
You would need to prepare the ssd with various partitions, / as ext4, /home as ext4 then during install you choose "something else" and tell the installer where to install. If the install is UEFI, you need an efi partition (create one as fat32, 512MB). example:
/dev/sda1 512MB fat32 /boot/efi
/dev/sda2 ext4 /
/dev/sda3 ext4 /home
For simplicity, I install everything in one partition / and I backup my /home to another drive.
shockingly the laptop is so safe that it does not load GParted. it prints a bunch of error messages on a black screen and gives up. is there another way to erase the ssd? I switched the driver from what was there to Microsoft storage as instructed here (option 1)
Can you boot the laptop into BIOS ?
Can you boot a UM20.04 live usb stick?
If yes, does wifi work?
if yes, install gparted in case it is not there (sudo apt install gparted)
Check if gparted "sees" the ssd (top right should show all devices not just the usb stick)
I doubt it the laptop is a brick, use logic steps to troubleshoot.
I can go in bios. I can boot in the 20.04 but it does not see the SSD. wifi works. gparted also does not see the SSD. this is sth to do with grub parameters. I still have not found the correct setup. smb else did it with nvme_core, but it did not work for me.
my boot-repair dump is here:
I will start looking how to recover ...
Are these the specs of your laptop? the only drive is eMMC 64GB ?
Lenovo - IdeaPad 1 14" Laptop - AMD A6-Series - 4GB Memory - AMD Radeon R4 - 64GB eMMC Flash Memory - Win 10 Home
all correct.
SSD is eMMC Card: Ramaxel 64gb
Bios is:FQCN12WW
EC: FQEC05WW
I have bad feeling that the BIOS does not have AHCI and it is simply not possible to install Linux on this box. hope Best Buy will take it back tomorrow.
Sadly this seems to be Ubuntu lagging behind on new technology. there are several posts about Linux and eMMC with no solution even though some people claim to have solved it. I installed mmc-utils, but there is no command to detect mmc devices. there should be mmcblkxx under /dev , but it is not there.
this was a good boxing day sale and the processor is much better than i5 and better than many i7 and with the eMMC it is quite speedy. but Linux is not ready for that technology yet.
Old AMD mobile processors (= not Ryzen) are quite lame compared to i5 and i7 and EMMC slow compared to a real SSD. AMD A6 and EMMC aren't new technology at all.
It's not a matter of «Linux doesn't work with EMMC». It does perfectly on my old/garbage chromebook. Didn't have to tinker with anything during the install by the way.
If you plan to install Linux on some hardware, make sure it is supported before buying it. That's why people in the GNU/Linux community tend to invest into refurbished business laptops (= Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude, HP Elitebook etc...) that are powerful, solid, maintainable, cheap and perfectly supported , most of the time.
If it's a new (from 2020) laptop, it can take some time before being supported. Then you might have more chance with a rolling release distro like Manjaro MATE (if you want to stick with the MATE desktop environment).
@ Utsuro: I like Mate as it is lighter than other Ubuntu flavors, but if you can recommend a distro that will see the eMMC I will try it. this is not high end, but new laptop and the processor is from jan 2020. comparing it on a couple of CPU benchmark sites rated it higher than i5 certainly and also better than some i7. not sure why you say eMMC is slow, it feels very fast compared to any of my hdd laptops. I admit I have no experience with SSD.
What AMD A6 processor are you talking about ? Haven't seen them releasing any A6 cpu in 2020. An A6-9220 from 2017 gets eaten by a low power i5 (4300U) from 2014. Ryzen are great though.
EMMC is faster than HDDs but way slower than SSDs. And it's planned obsolescence. What will you do when/if the EMMC craps out ? Swap the whole motherboard ? Boot on an USB SSD ? I guess your ram is soldered as well.
AMD Athlon Silver 3050e, yes the eMMC is soldered.
IIRC that laptop has a "security feature" that prevents you from booting another O/S from the USB and accessing the eMMC SSD. There should be a BIOS setting of "legacy" or "UEFI and legacy both". There are other settings you have to change to be able to select "legacy". Unfortunately, those settings vary with model. It will be something like "Disable Security BOOT". Lenovo has an active support forum -- someone there may have the specifics.
Is your CPU an A6 or Athlon Silver 3050e? The Athlon Silver 3050e is a Ryzen CPU.
the CPU is the 3050e. my company laptop is i5 8xxx with 4 cores and that Lenovo was faster. anyway it went back to Best Buy. SSD is supposedly much better than eMMC and I followed the advice and got a refurbished i5-3320 with proper SSD.
setting up windows on the new Lenovo was traumatic, they collect all info, it's just a spying device and I couldn't get out of 'safe' mode even with MS agent in a chat. MS have exceeded even their high standard of crappiness.
Merry Christmas Muchachos