Helloo thar Escapist. Been quite a while since I last created a thread and thus it feels a little awkward so let me stretch out my limbs... and there they go.
Excuse me while I go and collect them.
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I am back.
Any-hoo, I cannot install Linux Mint in my computer without causing the harddrive to disappear from my boot-list yet I can boot from a flash-drive just fine. I read online that it has something to do with the UEFI settings when I installed Windows 7 and now it makes the two operating systems incapable of co-existing. Even using something like EasyBCD does not work. Given this I was wondering if I should drop some money and buy a decently sized USB 3.0 Flash Drive and install a copy of Linux Mint to it since I can already boot a Live copy from a much smaller USB drive. If I can, can I also use it to boot from on my Laptop or would that cause driver and firmware conflicts?
My motherbaord is an Asrock Extreme9 LGA 2011 - Latest Firmware
Some Background: Last April I decided to migrate my Windows 7 installation from a 64GB Corsair M4 SSD to a 256GB Intel SSD and tried to use Acronis to make the transfer. I tried dozens of times only to have it fail every time so eventually I created a bootable Acronis flash drive and was able to successfully make the transfer, only after screwing around with the IDE settings on my motherboard. After I made the migration it appeared that I goofed hard when I forgot to unplug the old drive and booted from it instead which borked the copy. I tried it again and this time remembered to remove the first drive and found success.
A couple months later in June I was experiencing numerous issues with Windows timing out my GPU when hardware rendering and so decided to install Ubuntu, hoping to achieve more stability. After formatting my old O.S. drive I installed Ubuntu to it only to find that despite selecting the dual-boot option, Grub deleted my Windows boot files forcing me to spend several days trying to rebuild them which I did successfully. However it was only a month later when Ubuntu slowly became more and more corrupted and eventually no longer wanted to boot and so I formatted the drive and forgot about it since I was able to get Windows to stop timing out my GPU. It was only about a month ago I decided to try installing Linux again since some of the software I used ran so much better on it but decided to go with Mint instead of Ubuntu.
While changing the boot order to the Live Linux flash-drive I noticed that Grub was still a boot option despite the old harddrive having been formatted and decided to ignore it as trying to boot from it did nothing and it would skip down to Windows. Once again I selected dual boot during the installation and once again Window's boot files were deleted/corrupted. This time I could not replace them and was forced to reinstall my O.S. while the harddrive that Linux was installed on disappeared from the boot menu. Furthermore, while trying to boot from Grub just gave me errors this time around pertaining to IDE and UEFI settings that I could not change to satisfy the boot-software. Even booting using the live flash would not let me properly repair any issues with Grub as it could not find any trace of it and refused to install an updated version of it.
TL;DR: My motherboard's IDE/UEFI whatevers are incompatible with Grub but I can get a live copy to boot from a flash drive. Can I safely install a Bootable/Permanent copy of Mint on a flashdrive and why does it constantly corrupt or delete my Windows 7 bootfiles when I try to dual-boot install? Lastly, would it be safe to boot it on another computer like a laptop?
Excuse me while I go and collect them.
-
-
-
-
-
I am back.
Any-hoo, I cannot install Linux Mint in my computer without causing the harddrive to disappear from my boot-list yet I can boot from a flash-drive just fine. I read online that it has something to do with the UEFI settings when I installed Windows 7 and now it makes the two operating systems incapable of co-existing. Even using something like EasyBCD does not work. Given this I was wondering if I should drop some money and buy a decently sized USB 3.0 Flash Drive and install a copy of Linux Mint to it since I can already boot a Live copy from a much smaller USB drive. If I can, can I also use it to boot from on my Laptop or would that cause driver and firmware conflicts?
My motherbaord is an Asrock Extreme9 LGA 2011 - Latest Firmware
Some Background: Last April I decided to migrate my Windows 7 installation from a 64GB Corsair M4 SSD to a 256GB Intel SSD and tried to use Acronis to make the transfer. I tried dozens of times only to have it fail every time so eventually I created a bootable Acronis flash drive and was able to successfully make the transfer, only after screwing around with the IDE settings on my motherboard. After I made the migration it appeared that I goofed hard when I forgot to unplug the old drive and booted from it instead which borked the copy. I tried it again and this time remembered to remove the first drive and found success.
A couple months later in June I was experiencing numerous issues with Windows timing out my GPU when hardware rendering and so decided to install Ubuntu, hoping to achieve more stability. After formatting my old O.S. drive I installed Ubuntu to it only to find that despite selecting the dual-boot option, Grub deleted my Windows boot files forcing me to spend several days trying to rebuild them which I did successfully. However it was only a month later when Ubuntu slowly became more and more corrupted and eventually no longer wanted to boot and so I formatted the drive and forgot about it since I was able to get Windows to stop timing out my GPU. It was only about a month ago I decided to try installing Linux again since some of the software I used ran so much better on it but decided to go with Mint instead of Ubuntu.
While changing the boot order to the Live Linux flash-drive I noticed that Grub was still a boot option despite the old harddrive having been formatted and decided to ignore it as trying to boot from it did nothing and it would skip down to Windows. Once again I selected dual boot during the installation and once again Window's boot files were deleted/corrupted. This time I could not replace them and was forced to reinstall my O.S. while the harddrive that Linux was installed on disappeared from the boot menu. Furthermore, while trying to boot from Grub just gave me errors this time around pertaining to IDE and UEFI settings that I could not change to satisfy the boot-software. Even booting using the live flash would not let me properly repair any issues with Grub as it could not find any trace of it and refused to install an updated version of it.
TL;DR: My motherboard's IDE/UEFI whatevers are incompatible with Grub but I can get a live copy to boot from a flash drive. Can I safely install a Bootable/Permanent copy of Mint on a flashdrive and why does it constantly corrupt or delete my Windows 7 bootfiles when I try to dual-boot install? Lastly, would it be safe to boot it on another computer like a laptop?