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This is my first post, I hope to be correct.

I have a laptop which contains a 320 Gb HDD disk and a 32 Gb SSD disk. The SSD is only for accelerate the pc, and is not available to use as a storage disk. The pc have windows 7, but I would like to have a dual boot with ubuntu and windows because I need windows to use some software in the university. I have tried to install ubuntu since 3 years ago and I have been asking people of my university that know a lot of linux, but they never had a similar problem.

Problem: When I am installing Ubuntu 14.04 from a liveUSB, at the moment of choose the partition of the installation, there aren't any partition! It's all empty. Despite that, when I use gparted, there are all the partitions. The only thing that doesn't appear is the SSD, but it doesn't matter for me. I only want to install ubuntu but I can't. I made a partition for linux and for swap.

The laptop is: Toshiba Satellite u840-10u.

This is the output of "sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda":

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.8

Partition table scan:
  MBR: MBR only
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: not present


***************************************************************
Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format
in memory. 
***************************************************************

Disk /dev/sda: 625142448 sectors, 298.1 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 23DB31FC-3B07-4BC0-A2A4-5DC34363D99D
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 625142414
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 19053 sectors (9.3 MiB)

 Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         3074047   1.5 GiB     2700  Windows RE
   2         3074048       356671487   168.6 GiB   0700  Microsoft basic data
   4       602431488       625131519   10.8 GiB    0700  Microsoft basic data
   5       356673536       540499967   87.7 GiB    0700  Microsoft basic data
   6       540502016       591781887   24.5 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem
   7       591783936       602431487   5.1 GiB     8200  Linux swap

This is the output of "sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda":

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x10da52d1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048     3074047     1536000   27  Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2         3074048   356671487   176798720    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       356671488   602431487   122880000    5  Extended
/dev/sda4       602431488   625131519    11350016   17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5       356673536   540499967    91913216    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6       540502016   591781887    25639936   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       591783936   602431487     5323776   82  Linux swap / Solaris

What can I do? Thanks!!

jon
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  • I suspect you've got leftover RAID data on your disk, or possibly a damaged partition table. See here for more information. – Rod Smith Jun 25 '15 at 00:47

2 Answers2

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I have had better experience when I shrink the boot partition in gparted rather that create a partition for Linux. Once you shrink it, another partition will be created yet remember to make it at least 6.4 GB big. Reboot with live Ubuntu 14 and choose "install Ubuntu". It should then say, "we found you have another OS, would you like to install Ubuntu as well?" Hit "yes" and it should install Ubuntu.

ricomon
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  • @Jon, I did find this link that talks about the invalid GPT: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/how-to-fix-gpt-partition-table-is-invalid-4175420919/ . It can be the issue why you can't do it, but it is worth a try reading it. – ricomon Jun 24 '15 at 18:50
  • Thanks for your answer ricomon! It doesn't work... The main problem is that the list of all partitions is empty, and I can't select any one. Moreover, in a normal situation, at the 4th step you can choose to erase all the disk or make partitions, but in my case, the installation only allows me to do manually, and then I can't. It's so weird... – jon Jun 24 '15 at 21:46
  • @Jon, will this help: http://askubuntu.com/questions/72284/problem-selecting-partition-to-install – ricomon Jun 25 '15 at 13:19
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After a lot of hours of researching and asking to my college teachers, I could see that is not possible to do a dual boot in my laptop if you don't want to break things. There are two problems (or I think so):

  1. The software included on the laptop doesn't allow other configuration than the original.

  2. With an Ubuntu live-USB, I used Gparted and I saw that the boot partition is hidden and it could be that Ubuntu didn't see the partition table.

To solve the problem, I bought a SSD disk and nothing strange happened while installing the two OS. I know that is not a good solution, but I wanted a SSD for a long time and this was an opportunity.

Thank you to everyone interested in this and I hope this will help someone else!

Thomas Ward
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jon
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