On my new PC (I’ll have another post soon on what I’ve installed and choices I’ve made/avoided this time around), I have the following drives:
- A 2 TB Samsung SSD (main drive)
- A 1 TB WD drive (secondary)
- A 2 TB Samsung external SSD (no specific purpose yet)
- An 8 TB HDD (backup/camera photos)
- A 4 TB NAS (backup, various files I want accessible from multiple devices)
I have Windows 11 Pro set up on the main drive and have been planning on setting up another dual boot system, using Linux Mint again, as I did on my older PC. Somewhat randomly, I chose to use the external SSD for Mint.
I booted from a live Mint USB stick and went through the installation. I let it choose to automatically configure the dual boot after verifying that it would install Mint to the external SSD.
Or so I thought.
The install took a very long time. I was patient, I let it do its thing. At the end, it prompted me to remove the install media (USB stick) and hit ENTER to restart. I did, expecting to see the GRUB menu where I would have 10 seconds (by default) to choose Mint, Windows or enter the BIOS.
Instead, I very briefly saw mention of hitting F2 to get into the BIOS, then it loaded into Windows. A survey of all drives showed none had Linux Mint on them. The USB stick, however, is asking to be formatted in Windows, which leads me to believe that Mint installed on the USB stick.
This would seem like a very silly thing to do, but it would explain the very long install time. Why would it install to the USB stick? I do not know.
What I am contemplating doing, though, is taking the 1 TB SATA SSD in my old PC–which has Mint installed–and putting it in the new one, then running Boot Repair to get the GRUB menu working properly. Maybe.
After several false starts (I haven’t documented earlier attempts), it almost feels like the new PC is trying to reject Linux–or at least Mint. Maybe I can try another distro again.
I will ponder.
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