[SOLVED] Installer does not support usb attached HDD

[snorkelface]

SOLVED!

Tried to install 20.04 to an external USB hard drive. At the partition page, the installer doesn't show or detect the attached USB drive. Tried this on 3 laptops, 2-Dells and 1-HP. Tried the 18.04 installer and it shows up properly.

I have Kubuntu installed on all 3 laptops and after I boot them the usb drive shows up normally.

Does anyone have a 20.04 installer that will detect the USB hard drive?
Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to install 20.04 on a USB attached hard drive?

Thank you in advance

[snorkelface]

I just tried to install 21.10 and the installer detected the attached USB hard disk.
So... Someone goofed with the 20.04LTS install program. 18.04 and 21.10 both work. the 20.04 installer doesn't.

Any chance someone will fix this?

Can I take the installer scripts from the 21.10 release and modify them to work properly installing 20.04LTS?

[jlittle]

I tried to reproduce your problem, downloading Kubuntu 20.04.03, and had no trouble, booting from a stick in one USB port with the installer seeing a drive on another, both USB 3.

I used a Ventoy USB, you might give that a try. (Using a Ventoy USB is a simpler, easier way to boot from USB.)

Another idea... I presume the computer has a non-removable drive, does the OS on it use grub as a boot loader? If so, you could do an ISO boot from an iso somewhere on the non-removable drive. Slightly tricky grub commands, but there's only a few of them.

(The scripts are deep in the squashfs on the iso, it would be a mission extracting them and putting it back together again.)

[snorkelface]

John,
Thanks for your reply. I downloaded the Ubuntu 20.04 iso and it, along with the Kubuntu 18.04 and 21.10 installer work perfectly. Why would the Ubuntu installer be any different than the Kubuntu installer except for the name of the distro?

I tried using a Ventoy USB disk. Same problem with ONLY the 20.04 install

Even though the file check on the USB stick reports no errors, I'm going to download it again and give it a try. What I don't understand is that I have no problems with all those other installers including Mint Linux.

Every other installer works, so I don't think it has anything to do with my setup. i.e. usb port, disk, disk size, etc.

I'll try downloading and trying it again. The fact that yours work, lead me to believe I somehow have a bad iso.

[snorkelface]

I downloaded the iso again. This time, it worked perfectly! I have no idea what happened. I checked the check sum on the first iso and it matched. I ran the check sum on the USB drive after installing the ISO on the USB. Yet it didn't work. The new iso I downloaded just now, checked out like the old one, yet works.

John, since you said yours worked, I had to believe something was wrong with my version. I was right.