Primary drive not detected during installation via liveUSB

Question

The last couple of days I've been trying to install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS alongside Windows. Unfortunately there is one important thing where I can find tons about on the Internet but nothing really fits my situation or just doesn't work with my setup. When booting the liveUSB in UEFI mode, Ubuntu is unable to find other devices. My SSD does shows up when booting the liveusb with SATA operations in AHCI mode but than my windows doesn't work with AHCI what is not an option in my case.

Back at windows I was able to list my primary drive and all partitions (including the ESP partition) with their partition manager while I booted with SATA operations set to "Raid On". I also shrunk the windows C:/ partition to gain 64GB of free / unallocated space to install Ubuntu on.

More about my setup:

• Windows 10 Home (OEM)
• The SSD is by TOSHIBA
• More about my laptop: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-laptop/dncwxb1608v2

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Output of fdisk -l

Disk /dev/ram0: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

...

Disk /dev/ram15: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/loop0: 1.3 GiB, 1433468928 bytes, 2799744 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 /dev/sda: 1.9 GiB, 2031091712 bytes, 3966976 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
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xb261ec41

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *     2048 3966975 3964928  1.9G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


Error: no partitions
Gtk-Message: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.

Output of efibootmgr -v

BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0003
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager  HD(1,GPT,bdfab330-7e21-49af-9369-3cd2d7386a97,0x800,0xfa000)/File(EFIMicrosoftBootbootmgfw.efi)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}....z...............
Boot0003* UEFI: USB Flash MemoryPMAP, Partition 1 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0,0)/HD(1,MBR,0x65,0x800,0x3c8000)..BO

Output of dmraid -b same output with option -r

no block devices found

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How do I setup Ubuntu liveUSB so its able to detect my primary drive so I can install ubuntu on it, along with my windows installation?

Answer 1

First, you may be conflating two unrelated things. You wrote:

When booting the liveUSB in UEFI mode, Ubuntu is unable to find other devices. My SSD does shows up when booting the liveusb with SATA operations in AHCI mode but than my windows doesn't work with AHCI what is not an option in my case.

You describe two issues as if they were related, but they aren't:

• Boot Mode (BIOS/CSM/legacy vs. EFI/UEFI) -- This refers to the type of code the computer runs as a boot loader. Since the 1980s, most PCs have used BIOS firmware. BIOS is primitive and 16-bit in nature. Since late 2011, though, manufacturers have shifted rapidly from BIOS to the newer UEFI (which is EFI 2.x; I generally use "EFI," as it's the more generic term, and Macs still use EFI 1.1). UEFI is written in C and uses the same bit depth as the CPU and OS (32-bit or 64-bit; although there's some wiggle room in matching CPU, EFI, and OS bit depth, no EFI uses 16-bit code natively). Most EFIs have a feature called the Compatibility Support Module (CSM), which enables them to run BIOS-mode boot loaders. Your pre-installed Windows almost certainly boots in native EFI mode, and enabling the CSM to install Ubuntu would be much more likely to create problems than to solve them, so I strongly recommend sticking with EFI mode unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise. You've described no such reason.
• Disk access mode (IDE, AHCI, or RAID) -- All hard disks are accessed via a chipset on the motherboard or plug-in card or interface device. In most modern motherboards, you can tell the system to require the OS to understand the specific chipset by setting a disk access tool to "IDE" mode. More recently, AHCI mode provides a sort of software standardization, that enables AHCI drivers in the OS to be used rather than IDE drivers. This can be helpful for getting disks to work on newer motherboards, for which the IDE drivers might not yet be available. Finally, many motherboards put RAID control in the same menu as an IDE-vs-AHCI toggle, although this isn't really the same dimension. RAID enables multiple disks to be bundled together and accessed as if they were one disk, resulting in improvements in speed, reliability, or both. The type of RAID implemented by most motherboards is a type of software RAID mediated by the firmware, aka "fake RAID" -- although it's not really fake, just based in software. This RAID type generally causes more problems than it's worth, IMHO, because it can be difficult to get it to work in a multi-boot environment, so I recommend against using it.

The effect you describe is almost certainly caused by the IDE-vs.-AHCI setting; it sounds like your disk/SSD controller is not yet supported by Ubuntu 16.04, but it can be made to work via the AHCI setting. This has nothing to do with the BIOS-vs.-EFI setting, and since Windows is almost certainly installed in EFI mode, you should leave your firmware configured to boot in EFI mode (with "CSM," "BIOS," or "legacy boot" options disabled). In principle, there are four ways you could proceed:

• Switch the IDE/AHCI setting whenever you reboot -- This would be awkward in the extreme, so I'm mentioning it merely for the sake of completeness.
• Get Ubuntu to work with IDE mode -- You say you're using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. If by this you mean the original version that was released in April of 2016, then it's got a somewhat old kernel (in the 4.4 series). Using the latest in the 16.04 series, though (16.04.2) will upgrade the kernel to something in the 4.8 series, which may be enough to get Ubuntu working with your hardware's IDE mode. If that fails, try 17.04, which comes with a 4.10 kernel. If that fails, then you'd need to try custom-built kernels, possibly patched with experimental drivers, or in the worst case with a driver you write yourself. This becomes progressively more difficult and is likely beyond your skill level.
• Use another Linux distribution -- Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, and other Linux distributions all compile their kernels independently of one another. Thus, one or another of these may have a newer kernel, or may have compiled it with different options that might enable it to work with IDE mode on your hardware when Ubuntu won't. Note that Ubuntu derivatives, such as Mint, are unlikely to do any better than Ubuntu, since these Ubuntu derivatives generally use unaltered kernels from Ubuntu.
• Get Windows to work with AHCI mode -- Windows certainly supports AHCI mode, and if you were to re-install it with AHCI mode enabled, it should work. It's probably easier to switch your existing installation to use AHCI mode, though. I'm not a Windows expert, and this isn't a Windows forum, so I can't provide detailed directions here; but a quick Web search turned up quite a few pages on how to do this. This page is one of the first I found; but as I've never done this and I'm not a Windows expert, I can't promise that this procedure will work.

Overall, I'd say you should try a more recent Ubuntu version first with IDE mode; but that's mostly because I'm unfamiliar with the Windows procedures for switching disk mode and I therefore can't assess the risks of that approach. If a Windows expert tells you that switching Windows to AHCI mode is safe, you might want to try that approach instead. Of course, if even Ubuntu 17.04 doesn't work, then switching Windows' boot mode may be your best choice, unless you're willing to try another Linux distribution.