I'm trying to install antiX on an old 32-bit Eee PC from a USB drive. I selected 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 appears to offer the USB drive as a destination. I reformatted one disk as ext4 with GParted, updated its fstab entry, and tried again, but nothing changed. Do I need to delete the existing partitions completely instead of just changing their filesystem, and should the disks be mounted while preparing them for installation? My goal is to erase the NTFS partitions and install antiX on the internal storage.
3 Answers
The installer may be looking for unallocated space rather than an already-mounted or preformatted partition. In GParted, select the intended internal disk, delete its existing partitions, and apply the changes so the entire disk shows as unallocated. Then start the installer again and let it create and format the partitions automatically. Be absolutely certain you selected the internal disk, since deleting the partitions will erase its contents.
There are a few different layers being confused here: a physical disk contains partitions, and each partition has a filesystem such as NTFS or ext4. Windows drive letters usually refer to partitions, not separate physical disks. Changing a partition from NTFS to ext4 doesn’t necessarily give the installer a usable destination if the existing partition layout is still occupying the disk. Delete the old partitions so the disk is entirely free space, then let the antiX installer automatically partition and format it. You can inspect the layout from the live session with `sudo fdisk -l` and `lsblk -f`.
Unmount the partition you want to use, then delete that partition and apply the changes. The installer should then recognize the resulting empty space. You generally don’t need to manually create an ext4 partition beforehand; automatic partitioning is usually simpler for a complete replacement install.
I’m familiar with applying GParted changes, but I’ll try deleting the partitions completely. The installer did ask for some space on one of the disks, which made me hesitate to modify it.