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Question: When installing on my M.2 SSD (labeled sdb), it prompts me to choose a place for a boot-loader. I've tried several and get a blank screen. Installing to HDD (sda) works fine. Where do I install the boot-loader or how do I partition ahead of time to prevent this?

I have a System 76 Galago Ultra so all of the hardware is compatible with Linux and made with Ubuntu in mind. My question is when I try to do a single install to my internal Samsung SSD, which is labeled sdb, it prompts me to choose a device on which to install the boot-loader. I've tried several options and had little success. I've changed the bios to make sure it is the first to boot as well.

Specs that may be important: Partition table: GPT Drives: Sda - 1Tb HDD, Sdb - 250Gb M.2 SSD OS install attempt: 16.04.05

Thank you for any help this community has always been very helpful to those who are new.

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  • Is /sdb the full path you specified? Try specifying /dev/sdb as the path to install grub to.
    – TLin
    Jan 14, 2017 at 8:16
  • This worked but I still had to manually partition everything, which is odd. Normally a fresh install just ran with the installer. Thank you for your help.
    – SomaComa
    Jan 14, 2017 at 16:25

1 Answer 1

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I'm assuming you are installing in UEFI mode. If not, read the second part of the answer.

You should have the following partitions in your system unless you know what you're doing very well:

  1. 100 MiB UEFI partition ( is a FAT type partition, if I remember right)
  2. 30-40 Gib or more Ubuntu Root Partition (ext4, mount point /)

Create these two with the GParted utility that comes on the install disc. You can use other ways as well, but this is simpler. Try to keep the UEFI partition as the first partition on your /dev/sdb to avoid unintentional effects with your BIOS not detecting the partition.

If you're using Legacy Mode, you need to create a 1024 KiB partition at the very beginning of your /dev/sdb of the type BIOS Boot Partition. Use a tool called cgdisk to do this.

cgdisk is a command line tool. Launch it as sudo cgdisk /dev/sdb and then press enter on the first 1007KiB free space on your harddrive(if there's already a partition there of that size, it means this is not the problem and something else is wrong with the installation altogether).

Select the default start and end points of partition by pressing enter and then use the partition code ef02 to create a BIOS boot partition. Then save the partition table, exit, reboot and try reinstalling grub.

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  • Thank you this worked perfectly. The commenter above was correct as well but this partition scheme worked out perfectly. If anyone else is having trouble doing a single install and trying to get the USB to show up, I also realized that I had to make every drive a GPT drive including the USB. Since I could only use Windows to make a boot disk, I used Rufus to make it and selected the DD option. Thank you again for the help, needed my laptop to start classes again. Not a coder just a fan.
    – SomaComa
    Jan 14, 2017 at 16:28

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