I'm trying to install antiX on an old 32-bit Eee PC from a USB drive. I had to choose the frugal static option because it was the only one that successfully booted the live environment. The notebook's internal disks are currently formatted as NTFS. I mounted them, but the installer only seems to offer the USB drive as an installation target. I reformatted one disk as ext4, updated its fstab entry, and tried again, but it still wasn't available. Do I need to delete the existing partitions instead of just changing their filesystem, and should the disks be unmounted before I let the installer overwrite them? I want to erase the existing NTFS data and install antiX on the internal storage.
3 Answers
Unmount the partition you want to replace, then remove the partition entirely rather than just reformatting it. The installer should then be able to use the resulting empty space. Make sure the USB remains available as the live boot device until installation is complete, and remove it only when rebooting into the new system.
The installer generally needs unallocated space, not an already-mounted or merely reformatted partition. In GParted, select the intended internal disk, unmount any partitions on it, delete the existing NTFS partitions, and apply the changes. Once the whole disk shows as unallocated space, restart the installer and let it create and format the partitions automatically. Be absolutely sure you selected the correct disk, since this erases everything on it.
It helps to distinguish the physical disk, its partitions, and the filesystem on each partition. NTFS and ext4 are filesystems; formatting one existing partition as ext4 doesn’t necessarily make the disk an available installation target. Delete the old partitions so the installer can see free space, then allow it to create the required partitions and filesystems itself. You can inspect the layout from the live session with `sudo fdisk -l` and `lsblk -f`. Also, many small Eee PC models contain only one internal physical drive, so check the exact model before assuming there are two separate disks.
I know the changes need to be applied. I was hesitant to remove that partition because the live setup asked for some space on one of the drives, but I’ll try leaving the disk completely unallocated first.