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First I want to say I am an absolute beginner to this and though I've tried to do some research about it, I wasn't able to take away anything useful.

I want to install Ubuntu onto my Samsung t7 500gb external SSD while also using it as the 'live USB installation media'. I also would like to split the SSD into parts so that I can use a part of it to store files for my Windows OS but that's optional, the priority is to get Ubuntu running on the external SSD without messing with Windows installed on the internal SSD in my laptop. I can't use a pen drive now to create a live USB installer which I can use to install onto the external SSD, that's why I'm trying to use the SSD as the live installer.

I've seen answers suggesting to use Unetbootin to use the internal hard drive as the installation media but I would very much prefer to leave the SSD with Windows installed in it untouched as I don't really know what I'm doing and if something goes wrong I don't want it to screw up my Windows installation. My idea is to split the external SSD into 3 parts (if that's possible); a part which serves as the live USB installation, a part which I can install Ubuntu on, and a part which I can use to store other files as I won't be using all 500gb for Ubuntu. Most guides seem to do something called "shrink volume" in device manager to create unallocated space for installing Ubuntu but that option seems to be greyed out in the external SSD.

Any help is appreciated.

Skawang
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1 Answers1

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Install Ubuntu using only an External SSD

Ref: Can Ubuntu be installed to the pendrive it was booted from?

  • Best to unplug the Windows disk before proceeding

  • Divide your SSD into three partitions, Make one FAT32, about 3GB for the installer, make one ext4, about 40GB to 100GB, for Ubuntu and make one NTFS in remaining space for data. Add a 300MB FAT32 EFI partition at the beginning of the disk if your Windows boots in UEFI mode.

  • Use Universal USB Installer to install Ubuntu Live to the 3GB partition on the SSD, See: Can I install ubuntu 20.10 or 20.04LTS on dual boot with windows 10 without USB Drive?

  • Boot Ubuntu Live from the SSD using toram and install Ubuntu to the ext4 partition on the SSD. To ensure compatibility with Windows on your other disk, boot Ubuntu Live in the same BIOS / UEFI mode windows is installed in.

  • Plug in the Windows disk and boot the new Ubuntu install and delete the Live install, then run sudo update-grub to add Windows to Ubuntu's GRUB menu.

C.S.Cameron
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