Which version ?
Try formatting the hard disk first then LMDE
If that fails then try debian linux pure to see if that works
Experianced similar issues and debian solved it, then did lmde and that was fine.
3 Likes
This solved the problem. Essentially formatted the entire disk as EXT4 and set one partition sda1 as Linux bootable.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2226663&sid=09802610052e751a2a0ba7d3d9b213a7#p2226663
I’m not sure why this happened this way or how it got to be unbootable.
But now I am able to boot off the HDD.
6 Likes
Looks like an MBR vs GPT thing.
4 Likes