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My question is how can you get a successful installation of Ubuntu 12.04 OS. I am about to download and load Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit to my usb with the pen drive linux software.

I have a dell 570 desktop 64 bit. I have bought a separate and physical hard drive for my new operating operating system,... the hard drive is a SATA 500, Western Caviar Blue.

If anyone have any tips, I would really appreciate the help. I have been doing this one task for four days, but was not possible of getting it done. I have came up with grub missing files, it wouldn't read the old/new external hard drive. Even thought it noticed and was installed to it. Using the " / " , " swap ".

If anyone can give me some feed back of help. So that it can be a good installation from top to bottom. And just to clarify I did make my own live cd with the Ubuntu. Plus does anyone know what is up with Grub 1 and grub 2.

From Ronnie D. Marlow.

RobotHumans
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Ronnie Marlow
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    Make sure you are choosing the correct drive for the bootloader during install, and make sure this is the first hard drive listed in the boot priority in your BIOS. – Tom Brossman May 27 '12 at 06:01
  • I installed the 32 bit version and it sticks a lot, plus the software I want to use on the Ubuntu is only available in 64bit. I have a system with Intel processor and 4gig ram, with 500gb hard drive. The OS I downloaded said 64_32 bit, but when installing, it's not asking me to choose. How can I be sure that I am installing the 64bit and not 32 bit system? –  Apr 10 '14 at 15:07

2 Answers2

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I could install 12.04 64-bit with no issues whatsoever.

Correct me if I'm wrong, there are 3 disk devices during installation:

  1. internal disk
  2. pendrive (the ubuntu installer)
  3. external disk

I'm wondering if the order in which the disks are detected and assigned to device files in /dev/sdX can be a problem here. For example if during the installation the above devices are assigned respectively to /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, then that might be a problem when you try to reboot with the pendrive removed, as in that case the external disk will be /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdc.

Since I don't know grub2 in detail, this hypothesis can be completely wrong, but I would try to fiddle with the disk order:

  1. After installation, try to boot with the pendrive plugged in.
  2. After installation, try to boot with the pendrive removed.
  3. Instead of installing from pendrive, try to install from a cd.

As per your grub question, this should explain: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

janos
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While I can relate to your desire to getting the most optimal OS for your computer,I have to ask: Do you NEED the 64-bit version of Ubuntu?

As far as I know (feel free to correct), the improvements of 64-bit over 32-bit are only needed for special use purposes, for example if you are doing some very precise scientific calculations on your machine and you need the performance improvements.

You'll notice that when you download the 12.04 image on the Ubuntu website, it says that the 32-bit version is recommended. So, give it a try and see if that fixes any of your problems. From general experience (again please shoot me down if I am wrong), software is more geared towards 32-bit and you'll get less bugs. Especially when the release is relatively new.

Also, simply to clarify, how many hard drives are you using? There's the one inside your machine and there's also an external drive (the SATA 500)? Are you replacing the old one with the new one? And what you're saying is that the mount point (/) and the swap partition for your Ubuntu install are on the external drive...?

I need more details to be able to help.

Ouairz
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    32 vs 64 has been addressed repeatedly in other questions http://askubuntu.com/questions/7034/what-is-the-difference-between-32-bit-and-64-bit-and-which-should-i-choose – RobotHumans May 27 '12 at 05:36
  • I highly doubt that using 64 bit is causing any of these problems. Currently 64 bit Ubuntu's hardware/software support is almost identical to 32 bit Ubuntu for purposes. I think the problem is related to trying to install the OS to an external harddrive. – adempewolff May 27 '12 at 07:10