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I am new here. I am studying cybersecurity and am starting an apprenticeship soon. I was asked to back up my laptop to an external drive, turn the laptop into a Linux based machine and wipe Windows OS off.

I am having difficulty when I chat with vendors regarding if their HDDs or SSDs are compatible with Linux. Nobody has verified that they sell a Linux compatible drive.

Being new to this, I am guessing that I can buy any drive that is compatible with Windows and MacOS (I run both machines for different purposes) and then additionally format the external drive to work with all three. Please set me straight on this topic, recommend an external drive you like, and describe steps to install Ubuntu as my new OS thanks.

rckymtnroy
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2 Answers2

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I've never seen a Linux distro that cannot access a hard drive or SSD. You may possibly encounter compatibility issues with things like wifi, thunderbolt or other similar drivers although even this is unlikely these days, especially with Ubuntu. You can verify your hardware works by running a live session Ubuntu off the installation media before committing to anything (Right off the USB stick). Flash the downloaded Ubuntu .iso (Recommend LTS 22.04 unless said company specifies different) file using Rufus, balenaEtcher or other .iso flash utility in Windows to a 16GB+ stick (preferably USB3.0 for speed).

Joel Oliver
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Alrighty. Any drive will work with Linux. It is just an operating system. So any SSD or HDD will work, even old ones, assuming the disk works. If Windows works on the disk, so will Linux. Nobody bothers verifying it will work because it is a disk. At the end of the day, it (typically) has a partition table with partitions. Linux can be on those partitions, as can Windows. Or you can dual-boot, and have both. But Ubuntu will work with pretty much any hard drive or SSD.

I'll assume you will install Ubuntu to a drive, and that Windows is already backed-up, so you don't mind fully wiping the drive and deleting everything on it, including Windows. I'll assume you're installing to the main drive in your system, and you only have one*.

See these directions for how to install Ubuntu. Your device will very likely work, even if it isn't certified. You almost certainly have a 64-bit machine.

*You can have multiple OSs on different drives. But... it is a bit complex to setup properly.

cocomac
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