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I am new to Ubuntu and Linux in general. I have built a simple computer to try Ubuntu out. I tried to install Ubuntu through a USB flash drive. During the installation I got an error saying:

"Failed to copy files... Possibly an old hard hard drive..."

After restarting my computer the installer says I don't have enough space on my hard drive and I am not able to format it.

Any suggestions?

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  • It's a clean disk right? Just boot a live session and reformat it. I would also re-download the .ISO file and run a md5 check on it to make sure it is clean. Then re-burn it.
    – Seth
    Jul 25, 2014 at 19:34

1 Answer 1

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Not an answer, but a step forward maybe:

I hope that USB flash drive is a "Live CD", if it is, boot it in 'Try it out'-mode and then open a bash/Terminal with e.g. CTRL+ALT+T

In there, at the $ prompt, type

lsblk 

The response should look similar to this:

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 232,9G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   487M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2   8:2    0 200,5G  0 part /
└─sda3   8:3    0    32G  0 part [SWAP]
...
sdg      8:96   1   1,9G  0 disk 
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  

edit: added sdg and sr0 above
sdg is how an not yet partitioned device looks. It may have a partition *table* though.
sr0 is a CD/DVD R/W device
With partitions added to the 1.9GB microSD card, in card reader:

sdg      8:96   1   1,9G  0 disk 
├─sdg1   8:97   1   1,8G  0 part 
└─sdg2   8:98   1    99M  0 part 


From comment below: It looks as if you have an 1.9G disk - you need in the range of 6-10G when the install of 14.04 LTS is finished - judging from the content of my /.

You need to use 'gparted' to remove what there is now - while you're at it you will see what gparted says about the disk.

one more edit

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdg bs=512 count=1

would wipe ALL partition data from the 1.9GB microSD card above. IMPORTAN NOTE If you attempt this - be VERY SURE THAT YOU TYPE WHAT YOU SHOULD - it will wipe the disk you type the name of - which might be something else than the one you intended.

In the end, if it differs from what actually is, and you cannot tweak it to be correct - then the disk is suspect and might be faulty.

...
If you can make it work that way, you might try defining the partitions yourself: Make /swap (4-8G? Depending on your RAM) and /boot (1-2G), the rest for /

  • what is above is my setup on a "256G" SSD-disk.
    I have a separate disk mounted at /home for all my data, but that isn't necessary for a 'low data space' installation.
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  • This is the Response I got: >NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:16 1 1.9G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:17 1 1.9G 0 part /cdrom sr0 11:0 1 7M 0 rom loop0 7:0 1 922M 1 part /loop" The hard drive's size is 40 gigs.
    – Oksoy
    Jul 25, 2014 at 20:13
  • See addition above.
    – Hannu
    Jul 25, 2014 at 21:14
  • Like I said before the drive's size is 40G. The usb is 1.9G . I guess that means it doesn't recognize the drive. I have another one so I'll try it. Thank you for the help.
    – Oksoy
    Jul 26, 2014 at 5:30
  • Yes of course, the USB-thumbdrive has to be visible, forgot that `:-]
    – Hannu
    Jul 26, 2014 at 12:26
  • I managed to fix my problem by using a Windows 8 flash drive to format the hard drive. However, now I get a "Errno 30" message. Thank you for all the help @Hannu.
    – Oksoy
    Jul 26, 2014 at 15:40

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