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Complete Installation of SSD in Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04

This weekend I installed a new 1TB SSD in my Lenovo T530 laptop, and installed Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04 on the drive in a dual partition configuration. DISCLAIMER: I take no responsibility for any problems you may encounter in your own work after reading my post. This is a general guide only.

Here's how I did it:

  1. Back up my current hard drive.

  2. Tried to clone current hard drive to new SSD using proprietary software, but I got the blue screen of death when I swapped hard drives and tried to turn on the computer, so I decided to do a brand new, clean installation of both operating systems. This meant that I did steps 3 - 6 using my current hard drive, NOT the new one.

  3. Make a bootable USB for both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04. I could not get the Windows 10 installer software to work - it returned an error when I finished running it. I rebooted in my Ubuntu partition and downloaded the ISO file directly instead (NOTE: I could not find a way to download the Windows 10 ISO file when I was in my Windows partition - I even tried to change the web browser settings to make it look as though I was in a Linux configuration. This is why I decided to move over to my Ubuntu partition and download the ISO file from there.)

  4. It took a couple tries to download the ISO file, but I managed it (I think there was an error in the October update of Windows 10 but the updated version was pulled from the website this morning and the March 2018 configuration worked fine, go figure).

  5. Format the USB drive in Ubuntu using Disk Management to read as an NSTF drive. Copy over ISO file onto USB (requires at least 4.5 GB of storage space, I used a 16 GB drive).

  6. Making a bootable Ubuntu 18.04 drive is much more straightforward, I discuss it here.

  7. Remove the current hard drive from the laptop and replace with the new drive (see images below for detailed instructions). Required equipment: anti-static bracelet, screwdriver.

  8. Insert the Windows 10 bootable USB and boot up on that drive (hold Enter key down during boot up in Lenovo Thinkpads).

  9. Install Windows 10.

  10. Open Command Line as Administrator and run <chkdsk> to see if your install is clean and your drive is in good shape. Run <chkdsk /r> to repair if there are issues and reboot the computer before proceeding to the next step.

  11. Shrink the Windows 10 partition to make room for the Ubuntu partition that we will create later. I split my drive 50/50.

  12. Turn off computer and take out Windows 10 USB, put in Ubuntu USB. Boot to that media.

  13. Install Ubuntu. If you already successfully shrank the partition, you should be able to choose an installation option that installs Ubuntu alongside Windows 10 - I used that instead of doing a custom job this time.

  14. Check everything works by booting to both partitions and start having fun!


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