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Hope someone can help - tried dozens of suggestions without result.

I have an older Gigabyte MB with AMD processor, Bios 2015.

Have tried to install Ubuntu 20.4 on 5 different HDD's, all with the same result: Unable to create partition tables.

All HDD's have, at some point, been on a Win10 machine, so, not what that does to the situation. Have tried multiple suggestions of fixing MBA's, GPT's.

This last HHD I had, I did nothing other than start U20 on 'Try U', used Gparted with the below error. However, after closing the error - gparted, as with all the others, then showed un-allocated space without partition table, but would NOT add a Partition table (under Device - new partition table).

Any ideas?

this is the gparted result after trying to format the non-EFI partition:

Cylinders:  612905
 
Partition table:    gpt
 
Partition   Type    Start   End Flags   Partition Name  File System Label   Mount Point
/dev/sda1   Primary 2048    1050623 boot, esp   EFI System Partition    fat32       
/dev/sda2   Primary 1050624 312580095           ext4        

========================================
Format /dev/sda2 as fat32  00:00:01    ( ERROR )
        
calibrate /dev/sda2  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
        
path: /dev/sda2 (partition)
start: 1050624
end: 312580095
size: 311529472 (148.55 GiB)
clear old file system signatures in /dev/sda2  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
        
write 512.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 0  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 4.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 67108864  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 512.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 159502565376  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 4.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 159503024128  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 8.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 159503081472  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
flush operating system cache of /dev/sda  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
set partition type on /dev/sda2  00:00:01    ( SUCCESS )
        
new partition type: fat32
create new fat32 file system  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
        
mkfs.fat -F32 -v -I '/dev/sda2'  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
        
mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
mkfs.fat: unable to open /dev/sda2: No such file or directory
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  • Question: why are you formatting the disk as FAT32? Linux cannot be installed on that type of file system. You would need to use Ext4, ZFS, or something compatible with Linux. If you need a partition to share with Windows, add that later.
    – user1091774
    Jan 7, 2021 at 22:37
  • I have tried Fat32, ext4, etc etc etc. In all scenarios, it comes back with error of no disk label, gparted not finding a partition table, and gparted not creating a partition table
    – rfeyer
    Jan 7, 2021 at 22:39
  • Why reformat sda2 as FAT32. You want sda1 as FAT32 for the ESP and sda2 as ext for / (root). If old Windows drives you may to make sure Windows fast start up was off, as that sets hibernation flag and prevents Linux NTFS driver from accessing the drive.
    – oldfred
    Jan 8, 2021 at 1:33

1 Answer 1

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You don't say how old the motherboard is. Could this be due to a BIOS setting to do with UEFI/non UEFI?

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2
  • Ha: you are very close!
    – rfeyer
    Jan 8, 2021 at 0:09
  • I went and searched al ittle more and found the answer: How do I guve the below poster credit? (here is the original posters answer to his own question):Update: I've received my replacement SSD but was still experiencing the same issues. It turned out that in my BIOS (gigabyte fx990 ud3 rev 4.0) OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type was set to IDE instead of as SATA type. Only the Samsung 840 EVO had the problem being run as IDE. share edit follow flag answered Jan 24 '15 at 18:40 Benjamin Delibasic
    – rfeyer
    Jan 8, 2021 at 0:11

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