Booting Old Gadgets with Ubuntu

I have old gadgets with lot of old data including my favorite films.

For about three weeks I was trying to install Debian 11 and Emmabantus while keeping old data.

I could not.

I tried copying to a SATA external disk but transfer rate was snail pace and it abruptly stopped for no reason.

There was no problem installing Ubuntu along with data.

But due to frugal and commercial Ubuntu ploys, I could not open most of my files including films.

There was no VML utility.

I tried Debian and Emmabantus first but they won't boot after installing on the Immation and Apallo disk with no ESP partition, to boot.

Finally, I decided to install Ubuntu last, after Debian or Emmabantus install, on one Immation 500GB and the other, one terabyte disk.

It worked and Ubuntu read and installed the GRUB, the Grand Universal Boot Record.

By the way, ESP or EFI partition can reside on any sector, not necessarily starting from the first sector of the hard disk.

That was a relief and if the first sector becomes corrupt or unusable the whole disk cannot be used.

I have a USB stick which I installed a bizarre script and it cannot be formatted.

It has become a read only stick.

USBs are supposed to be erasable and reusable, unless of cause a copyright firmware is installed by OEM guys.

Thanks Ubuntu your GRUB search is excellent.

Both hard disks had only 3 year warranty and I erased all Windows utilities.

The Windows won't let me install Linux distributions.

They are solid after forty years of use.

Thanks Immation the workmanship of your hardware is excellent.

They are solid sealed disk containers.

Keeping them in the box was absolute waste.

They were the with two, OLD, Type 2 USB slots, one for reading and one for writing.

They work as new and I decided to pack the SATA external disks into their original boxes and give them a little respite.

Do not throw old hard disks simply because you have new gadgets.

I can take them with me as mobile units and watch my old films and re-edit my book files.

I had forgotten the data were recorded in one of the disks.

I do not have to redo files and my PC is free of junk files.

Recordings stuff on USBs without a label on top is annoying.

I have erased data on all USBs and use them as bootable Linux USBs leaving some space for storing and keeping the ISO images.