wiped disk - no longer bootable

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Wed Jul 10 10:33:20 UTC 2019


On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 at 08:34, Volker Wysk <post at volker-wysk.de> wrote:

> > Yes! How do you normally partition disks?
>
> With the ubuntu installer.

:-o

It works but it's so limited that I normally do it myself with Gparted first.

> My mainboard is old. So it's a BIOS, not UEFI, right? But I had a
> single partition of almost 4 TB. So why did it work?

Like I said: there are workarounds. GPT has a miniature fake MBR
embedded in it so that old machines at least see the disk, so people
don't accidentally erase the thing in the mistaken belief that it's
empty.

This fake MBR can be used to embed a small bootable partition, I
believe. I have not tried. I do not own (at home or work) any disks
big enough to _need_ GPT so except on my Mac I use MBR to keep it
simple.

Secondarily: a single 4 *TB* partition? :-o

I wrote some guidance on partitioning here:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2010/06/23/reg_linux_guide_2

If it's 4TB then you must use GPT. MBR can't handle a disk that big.

The one bonus of GPT is that you do not have to deal with "primary"
and "extended" partitions and logical drives any more. That only
applies to MBR.

So, step 1. Put Win10 on it first. This makes it much easier to update
your BIOS even if nothing else. You don't need a licence key or
anything and the ISO is a free download from microsoft.com

Make Windows' partition a fairly small part of such a big disk, e.g. 128 GB.

It will make some of its own Windows black magic volumes. Something like:

[#1 - EFI system partition]
[#2 - Windows system reserved]
[#3 - Windows C drive]

You can then shrink #3 if needed and make in addition:

[#4 - BIOS boot for Grub]
[#5 - Linux root] -- 64 GB is huge
[#6 - 2nd Linux root] for experimenting/disaster recovery
[#7 - Linux home] All the rest of the space, leaving 2x RAM for swap]
[#8 - Linux swap] at the end of the disk

That is what I would suggest as a reasonable use of so much space.

Installing Windows will also highlight any possible hardware problems.

> I just used the (k)ubuntu installer for LVM and encryption.

Wow. OK. Well, I strongly suggest following the advice of people here
and trying to keep things as simple and "vanilla" as possible when it
comes to fancy partitioning systems, LVM, encryption, etc.

-- 
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