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I am new here. I am studying cybersecurity and am starting an apprenticeship soon. I was asked to back up my laptop to an external drive, turn the laptop into a Linux based machine and wipe Windows OS off.

I am having difficulty when I chat with vendors regarding if their HDDs or SSDs are compatible with Linux. Nobody has verified that they sell a Linux compatible drive.

Being new to this, I am guessing that I can buy any drive that is compatible with Windows and MacOS (I run both machines for different purposes) and then additionally format the external drive to work with all three. Please set me straight on this topic, recommend an external drive you like, and describe steps to install Ubuntu as my new OS thanks.

rckymtnroy
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    ANY drive is compatible. – ChanganAuto May 02 '22 at 23:22
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    Test for yourself easily: The Ubuntu Desktop Installer includes a "Try Ubuntu" environment specifically so you can test all your hardware (wifi, printers, disks, video card, network, etc.) as exhaustively as you like BEFORE committing to an install. The "Try Ubuntu" environment runs in RAM only and doesn't touch any of your HDDs/SSDs. Simply create and boot the installer, select "Try Ubuntu" and test, test, test until you are satisfied. – user535733 May 02 '22 at 23:45
  • You can use any hard drive. For installation instructions, follow the official tutorial. If you need additional help, please refer to what questions are on-topic and review the help page on how to ask a good question. Note that questions soliciting opinions are off topic. This includes questions asking for hardware recommendations-they are not allowed. Also, avoid asking overly broad questions. If you want to start a discussion, please use Ubuntu forums. – Nmath May 03 '22 at 00:08

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I've never seen a Linux distro that cannot access a hard drive or SSD. You may possibly encounter compatibility issues with things like wifi, thunderbolt or other similar drivers although even this is unlikely these days, especially with Ubuntu. You can verify your hardware works by running a live session Ubuntu off the installation media before committing to anything (Right off the USB stick). Flash the downloaded Ubuntu .iso (Recommend LTS 22.04 unless said company specifies different) file using Rufus, balenaEtcher or other .iso flash utility in Windows to a 16GB+ stick (preferably USB3.0 for speed).

Joel Oliver
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Alrighty. Any drive will work with Linux. It is just an operating system. So any SSD or HDD will work, even old ones, assuming the disk works. If Windows works on the disk, so will Linux. Nobody bothers verifying it will work because it is a disk. At the end of the day, it (typically) has a partition table with partitions. Linux can be on those partitions, as can Windows. Or you can dual-boot, and have both. But Ubuntu will work with pretty much any hard drive or SSD.

I'll assume you will install Ubuntu to a drive, and that Windows is already backed-up, so you don't mind fully wiping the drive and deleting everything on it, including Windows. I'll assume you're installing to the main drive in your system, and you only have one*.

See these directions for how to install Ubuntu. Your device will very likely work, even if it isn't certified. You almost certainly have a 64-bit machine.

*You can have multiple OSs on different drives. But... it is a bit complex to setup properly.

cocomac
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  • It was great to get the link to the tutorial, and I am setting up for dual logging so I followed an additional link within that link to guide me through. I followed it exactly but am now stuck with Ubuntu on a flash drive, I have my external HDD partitioned and formatted for Windows back up and MacOS as I use Apple products occasionally. I allocated freespace on the C: drive for installing Ubuntu from the flash drive. When I get to that part of using the free space, Installer is saying it is unusable space. The new question I posted yesterday has more details and images – rckymtnroy May 17 '22 at 23:17