Problem reinstalling Xubuntu 16.04

[MR ZenWiz]

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 5:18 AM, Nils Kassube <kassube at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> You could put the disk in a USB enclosure and use a VM with USB access
> to install Ubuntu. Use the downloaded ISO image as virtual DVD for the
> installation and use the USB disk instead of a virtual disk image.
>
I tried that with VirtualBox.  I had to look up how to attach a real
("raw") hard drive, but it seemed to work.

However, when I plugged the drive into the laptop, it did not boot.  I
rebooted from the flash drive to "try" Xubuntu, and it does not like
the hard drive format at all - it's not ext4 or vfat.

I ran gparted from a flash drive on the laptop with the drive put back
in, and it showed as unformatted, even though it installed just fine
in the VM.

So, I'm installing from my main laptop with its primary disk removed
(temporarily).

What a pain.

Thanks for all the advice.  Hopefully it will actually install and
boot this time in the old laptop so I'll still have an available if
somewhat decrepit spare.

MR