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I am trying to create a bootable Ubuntu 14.04 LTS OS on a 32 GB Flash drive. I have partitioned the flash drive, half in NTFS for storage, and half Ext2 as the primary partition to install Ubuntu. When I open Startup Disk Creator it only sees "Lexar USB Flash Drive (/dev/sdb)" and 0.0 B Free Space. I can erase the disk, but this will remove the partitions which is not what I want.

The reason I want to do this is that I use a HP notebook at home which is running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and an iMac running Mac OS X 10.9 at work. I want to be able to use the same software at work and home. The USB Ubuntu needs to be bootable from the iMac, and the data partiton needs to be available from this, and on my HP notebook.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

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    Startup Disk Creator uses FAT32 partitions. Try reformatting the ext4 partition as FAT32.
    – muru
    Jun 15, 2014 at 21:52
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    Thanks for the reply. I tried putting both partitions into FAT32, Startup Disk Creator still sees the disk rather than the volumes on the disk. It seems that on my system Startup Disk Creator only sees disks rather than volumes on the disk. Is this supposed to be the case? If so, I'll probably need to think of a work around. I guess if I find a different flash drive to create an installer then install to the relevant partition on the 32 GB flash drive it might work.
    – stevemccoy
    Jun 15, 2014 at 23:58
  • I think this problem is with the flash drive. I tested it on a 16GB pendrive: imgur.com/YSOuoiZ
    – muru
    Jun 16, 2014 at 0:14
  • You may be correct. Although the volume was seen when running ubuntu in a VM from my mac so I created the startup disk there, but it wouldn't boot from the mac. I think I'll get a different flash drive to try. Thanks for your input.
    – stevemccoy
    Jun 16, 2014 at 19:20
  • @muru "Startup Disk Creator uses FAT32 partitions. Try reformatting the ext4 partition as FAT32." should be an answer. Just helped me out.
    – don.joey
    Jan 10, 2015 at 15:50

2 Answers 2

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I am using Startup Disk Creator in KDE and it doesn't show my flash drive.

Opened KDE Partition Manager and found out that the drive is formatted using ext4. Deleted the partition, created a fat32 one and applied the changes.

After that Startup Disk Creator shows the flash drive.

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To me it didn't show up because it had an NTFS file system. After I reformatted it as FAT, it immediately appeared in the "Disk to use" list. To reformat it, i did the following:

  1. Dash -> Disks
  2. Select the drive in the list
  3. In the Volumes section, click the little cogs (configuration) icon, then select Format...
  4. Format the drive WARNING: this will erase your data Erase: Don't overwrite existing data (Quick), Type: Compatible with all systems and devices (FAT), enter a name, click Format...

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