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I have a Dell Precision 5520 laptop on which I am trying to install Ubuntu.

When I insert my USB installer of Ubuntu, I get a message of "you need at least 8.6 GB disk space to install Ubuntu. This computer has only 2.1 GB."

The USB stick I'm using is about that size. It looks like the installer doesn't recognize my drive. How do I tell Ubuntu I have a hard drive?

I looked in BIOS, and it shows an SSD in the M.2 PCIe slot, but there's also no drive selected as the "Primary Hard Drive."

BIOS drive data

Update: running sudo fdisk -l | grep 'Disk /dev' confusingly returns two small disks:

Disk /dev/loop0: 1.5 GiB Disk /dev/sda: 1.9 GiB

Neither of these are my SSD, but I'm not sure where the second one could be coming from.

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    Can you see the drive when booting into the live version? Commented Nov 5, 2019 at 15:41
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    Dell typically needs UEFI update, SSD firmware update & change from RAID or Intel RST to AHCI for drive. dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln151664/… Possibly similar models: Dell Precision 5530 ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2420905 Dell 5230 with 3 m2 drives. ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2406057 Commented Nov 5, 2019 at 16:08
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    @oldfred, your link got me pointed in the right direction! Thanks. Commented Nov 5, 2019 at 17:12
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    Note if dual booting with Windows, you need to first add AHCI driver into Windows. Or temporarily change back to RAID/Intel RST, and add AHCI driver into Windows. Then reset to AHCI. Commented Nov 5, 2019 at 17:19

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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In Dell's system BIOS (accessed by tapping F2 repeatedly on boot up), I had to change the "SATA" setting to AHCI. The RAID option was selected instead, somehow. I rebooted and the installer found a place large enough to install.

@oldfred pointed me in the direction of this Dell support article that made that recommendation.

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  • Thanks for sharing the solution :-) Commented Nov 5, 2019 at 17:14

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