I'm having trouble installing Linux on my 1TB hard drive. I've tried several methods, but I keep hitting a wall where the installer fails to write the bootloader. I've used Rufus to burn the ISO with an MBR partition scheme that targets both UEFI and BIOS. It seemed to work for a while, but then I got an error saying the bootloader couldn't be written to the hard drive. Here are my specs: I'm on an ASUS laptop with 16GB of RAM and an NVIDIA RTX 3050, plus a 1TB SSD as my main drive and a 1TB HDD for dual-booting Linux. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
I ran into the same problem before where the GRUB installer failed to work. I spent a couple of days trying to troubleshoot but eventually just ended up booting from BIOS to get into it. I suspect it might just be an issue with ASUS gaming laptops, as I've got an ASUS TUF Dash F15.
It sounds like there could be a MBR/GPT confusion going on. When using Rufus, make sure you select **GPT** for the partition scheme and **UEFI (non-CSM)** for the target system. If Rufus continues to give you trouble, you could also try using balenaEtcher or Ventoy—they tend to work without issues. Plus, before you install, double-check the checksums to be sure everything's good. Don't forget to turn off Secure Boot in your BIOS settings if it's on.
Wait a second, did you flash the ISO onto your internal hard drive? That's not typically how it's done! You should really be flashing the ISO onto a USB flash drive instead. Once you boot from that and run the installer, it should work better, because it'll target your HDD for the actual Linux installation. Just a heads up, though—running Linux off an HDD can be pretty slow compared to an SSD, so if you can, consider upgrading your storage!
Yeah, I've got a TUF laptop too and had a rough time with it—definitely a tricky setup!