1

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 to my 16GB PNY flash drive, to use as a boot disk for my laptop. Now, it is running ludicrously slow, no matter what, so I am trying to re-install Ubuntu, but when I plug my boot disk in to any other computers (usually running windows 7), it is not assigned a drive letter. The computer will install drivers for it, but when I try to access it, the drive is not there.

EDIT1: The drive was formatted for NTFS during the initial install.

3
  • If it's not formatted to ntfs or fat32, then Windows won't read it. Sep 15, 2014 at 16:06
  • ... or FAT16 or FAT12 ;-)
    – Jan
    Sep 15, 2014 at 16:08
  • Ah, okay. That makes more sense. I did a full install, yeah. Do you know how I can change it from EXT4 to NTFS? Sep 15, 2014 at 16:18

1 Answer 1

1

From your comments above, it looks like you did a complete install of Ubuntu on the 16GB USB drive.

There are two methods to put Ubuntu in an USB. The first is a LiveUSB that is used to install Ubuntu in the hard drive. The second is a full install, where the USB works like a hard drive. See What would be the differences between a persistent USB Live Session and a installed Ubuntu in a USB drive?

A full install on a 16GB USB, formatted the USB drive ext4. This is the format Ubuntu (Linux in general) requires. Ubuntu cannot be installed in NTFS. The ext4 partition where Ubuntu is installed cannot be changed to NTFS. If you do, you will lose all the ownership and permission information Ubuntu needs to work properly. Then Ubuntu won't work.

On the other hand, Windows does not know about ext4 format and thus can't read.

Solutions:

There are third party extensions you can install in Windows to make it read ext4 partition. See 3 ways to access your Linux partition from Windows.

Alternately, recreate the USB drive.

You can create a small (say 512MB) FAT32 partition in the beginning of the USB drive to share some data. This should be the first primary partition partition for Windows to see it. You can leave the rest of the 16GB unallocated for Ubuntu installation to find it. Or you can choose "Something else..." during Ubuntu installation and format the remaining part of the drive ext4 and select mount-point /.

Hope this helps

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .