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I'm trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 onto a server hard drive. The server machine I have only supports booting to CD/DVD, not USB. When I've tried burning the Ubuntu 14.04 installer to a DVD for install, I've gotten corruption errors. I have a SATA to USB adapter, so I want to do the initial server install from within a Virtual Box. I've successfully created a virtual machine that uses the external hard drive and uses the Ubuntu 14.04 iso file as the image for a virtual CD/DVD drive to install from. I've used this setup and successfully completed the installation of the server software. The problem is, now when I shut down the virtual machine and scan the external hard drive, it doesn't appear to have any data on it. Using Gparted, I can't identify any partition or read any data, and I also can't boot to the external hard drive from my physical server, though it works perfectly launching from the virtual machine. I can tell that the .vmdk that I'm using does rely on the external hard drive because the virtual machine won't launch if I unplug the USB adapter. I'm wondering if Virtual Box is using the external hard drive, but writing data in a format that is really just another virtual hard drive. Is there anything I can do so that I can view the server's files from outside of the virtual box itself? Thanks in advance!

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  • So if you plug the USB install into another PC and boot into GParted Live, will the USB drive show as empty? Is it formatted at all?
    – Enigma
    Apr 15, 2015 at 13:53
  • @Enigma I don't have "USB install" on an actual USB drive, I simply mounted the Ubuntu server 14.04 install .iso image to the virtual box where I was installing it. The key difference was that the virtual box's "hard drive", rather than being a .vdi file or other virtual hard drive, was directed to my server's physical drive which I had connected to my laptop via USB adapter. After the virtual box runs the server install perfectly, I close the virtual box and check the physical drive with GParted from my laptop but it appears unformatted and I'm unable to mount it. Apr 15, 2015 at 16:03
  • Maybe your ISO is corrupted. I'd try getting a DVD/CD burning working successfully as that should be much less of a headache. Burn on different computers with different drives if possible and re-download the ISO + use a hash checker to verify it's integrity.
    – Enigma
    Apr 15, 2015 at 16:48

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