Linux Mint – USB Boot Install Not Recognizing Disk Space

linux-mintraid

There seem to be similar questions here, here and here but with no confirmed answer, and no answer that addresses my situation satisfactorily.

Update: I've deleted Windows and reset BIOS factory settings and the problem persists. This is no longer a dual-boot specific question and has been updated.

I'm trying to install Linux Mint on a Dell XPS 13 9350 with no installed Hard Drive. I also tried Ubuntu with the same results, but I'll talk specifically about Mint in this question as its my desired distro.

I have added Mint to an 8GB USB stick via Yumi. I reboot the machine and hold down F12, then choose to boot from the USB.

A second screen allows me to "Start" Linux. I start it, and then begin installing from the install icon on the desktop. After being asked about language, keyboard and WiFi I'm told that I only have 10GB of space, which is not enough to install. It appears to be trying to install on the USB drive, as this is a 256GB hard drive.

Output of lsblk -f:

NAME        FSTYPE   LABEL                          UUID                      MOUNTPOINT
loop0       iso966   Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon 64-bit  2018-06-26-15-38-36-00    /cdrom
loop1       squashfs                                                          /rofs
sda                                                                        
Ｌsda1      vfat     MULTIBOOT                      190...                    /isodevice
nvme0n1
Ｌnvme0n1p1 ext4                                    16639...

I have manually toggled "RAID On" to AHCI in the BIOS and that allowed me to complete the Linux install wizard, but gave me a Dell Support window message on boot about a missing OS. Since then I have reset to factory BIOS settings and I get a "Missing Hard Drive" message on boot.

What can I do to both install and boot up Mint, now on a computer with no OS?

Best Answer

I was able to solve this with the help of a colleague, finally. It took several steps in BIOS:

  1. Disable Secure Boot.
  2. Set SATA-controller to AHCI from RAID On.
  3. Set boot mode to legacy from UEFI.

I wasn't able to figure out exactly what was wrong, but the installer seems to have installed the OS in a drive that UEFI did not auto-detect, but legacy boot mode did.

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