Long story short: I was a happy user of the first generation (screen resolution: 1024x576), with a 8GB SSD. But SMART warned me about a forthcoming disk error, so I had purchased one OCZ Vertex Plus 60G SSD, and planned to do a fresh install, download Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.6.3.exe and 11.04 image, create my installer key.

But there goes the horror:

1. first (normal) installation seemed to be successful. I had used the installer's formatting tool, with 15G as / 2.5 G swap, and the rest for /home. But after the reboot (the installer USB media still plugged in), the third partition was not recognized/mounted automatically. Even worse: I had tried to mount manually via mount -t ext4 /dev/sda /home but I was out of luck as it complained about bad fs type, superblock.... So I did a mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3, but still can't mount. Even worse: after unplugging the USB installer and rebooting I was greeted with GRUB error 17.


2. OK read a lot, reinstall, this time format with GParted (from the Ubuntu menu) using GPT partition table, this time: 2.5 G swap, the rest is /, then run the installer, and used the previously created partitions. After rebooting with the USB installer still plugged in everything seemed normal. After unplugging the USB and rebooting, I was greeted with GRUB unknown fs, with grub rescue> where I wasn't able to boot :-(


3. (and 4....6) read and research a lot, tried Archlinux (shame on me, I love that distro too), same story either with partitioning via gfdisk, using GPT table, then tried fdisk -H 32 -S 32 /dev/sda as described here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives and double checked the results as recommended: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSD_Memory_Cell_Clearing#Post_Process_Observation But the results are the same: I can boot with my USB plugged in (and if there are more then one partition the last is not recognized). After unplugging the USB key, I can't boot. I had also tried the recommendation to create the 1 Mb BIOS boot partition on the GPT partition (same archlinux SSD wiki page), still no luck. I had tried without the BIOS boot, and syslinux bootloader. Still no luck.

I really need that machine to work on Monday. Could somebody help me out?
Thanks in advance,
Zsolt