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I've recently downloaded Ubuntu with the hopes of using it as an alternative to Windows on an old desktop of mine, which features an 80GB HDD and a 256GB SSD. I've installed Ubuntu on the HDD, and have been trying to have access to the SSD in any capacity. It was previously loaded with a bunch of things I've since backed up elsewhere, so I went and formatted it using the Disks utility.

After formatting it looks like this:

screenshot

I cannot find the disk in any fashion to copy files to it or use it in any fashion. I looked into it, and it was suggested that I attempt to put in partitions, specifically an Ext4 one, but whenever I try I get an error that reads

Don't know how to create partitions of partition table type `(null)' (udisks-error-quark,0)

I'm really not sure where to go from here. I probably should have installed Ubuntu onto the SSD to begin with, as it is the drive I want as my main for this computer, but having made the error to begin with, I'm not wholly sure what to do now. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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3 Answers 3

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It looks like the drive is mounting, but Ubuntu is not seeing a partition table on the drive. To fix this, you will need gParted. You can install it by opening a terminal and typing:

sudo apt-get install gparted

WARNING: The following will erase any data you may have on the drive.

  1. Run gParted.
  2. Select your disk from the drop down box in the upper right corner. In your case it would be /dev/sda.
  3. Under the "Device" menu, select "Create Partition Table"
  4. A warning dialog will be displayed, and it will ask you to select a partition table type. Select "msdos".
  5. Click Apply.

gParted will now create an new partition table on your SSD. Once that operation is complete, you can format the drive.

I hope this helps!

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    The Disk Utility program that Brett was using should be able to do this, but I don't happen to know the exact steps to do this off the top of my head. GParted is more commonly used for this task, so Mark's suggestion to use it makes sense.
    – Rod Smith
    Jun 13, 2017 at 13:25
  • ahh very good that worked for me
    – Kenan
    Dec 8, 2019 at 20:38
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  1. Find the name of the partition by using lsblk or fdisk -l. Let's say it is sdc1.
  2. Unmount that partition, if mounted: sudo umount /dev/sdc1
  3. Format the partitionsudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=4M.
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I had the same problem using gnome disks. Just reduce the suggested partition size, say from 500GB to 499GB and it should work.

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