I have two internal hard drives in my pc, one has windows 11 and one is for extra storage.

I hooked up an external USB drive to install Linux onto. During the install it says

Device for boot loader installation

And then it gives me a number of options

/dev/nvme0n1 (this I think is what my windows 10 is at)

/dev/nvme0n1p1

/dev/nvme0n1p3

/dev/nvme0n1p4

/dev/sda ATA WDC WD10EZEX-00W (1.0 TB) Ii think this is the other internal drive

/dev/sda2

/dev/sdb WD easystore 2647 (1.0 TB)

/dev/sdb1

I think the easystore is my external drive. The problem is they are both 1T in size and both western digital.

How do I know which is which?

Just above where it says “device for boot loader installation” it shows

If I try to click on /dev/sdb I can’t click on install now.

On the basis that I should be trying to install in /dev/sdb what am I doing wrong to actually start the install process?

Yeah I’m new to Linux. I need help to do it right and not nuke my windows install

  • @[email protected]OP
    2•1 month ago

    I hit the install button.

    And it the icon turned into a circling icon type thing. (Yeah I know bad description) and it has been doing that and not installing ever since. 40+ minutes so far.

    I’m going to leave it for a while longer.

    • @[email protected]
      4•1 month ago

      No progress bar? Spinning mechanical disk or SSD? If it’s literally still on the same window with no change to the GUI in any way other than a progress indicator on the mouse cursor for 40m, I’d say try clicking again. If it responds, I’ll be a bit surprised, but hey, you try these things just to see what will happen. It’ll probably result in no change still.

      At that point, don’t let it waste any more time. Something got stuck. Shut down and reboot and try again.

      • @[email protected]OP
        4•1 month ago

        Not sure what I did different this time. Tried and failed four maybe five times. It started the install this time. Have a progress bar.

        Correction

        It worked. Total install time about five minutes. Going through the update drivers section at the moment.

        Wish I knew what I did different this time that made it work.

        But thanks for the help

        • @[email protected]
          3•1 month ago

          I wish you the best. Don’t hesitate to ask the community for help. People in this camp like to help each other.