[Solved] Can I run this off my HD?

[gold_finger]

This will expose me as a luser but I'm having trouble being certain that I am pointing the installer at the drive I'm intending. I'm running LinuxLite off a USB and I'm trying to install on an SSD that's in the machine. Would you have any advice for me? Once I suspect that i did an install right over the top of my USB and had to recreate it.

I don't think it's possible to install to the "live" USB, so something else must have gone wrong before.

I'm seeing notifications that tell me that there are mounted partitions on/dev/sda (and I don't know what that means, I did mount the drive icon on the desktop during troubleshooting)

If you've mounted any partitions on the target drive, unmount them first before attempting installation.  If the mounted partition has an icon on the desktop, just right-click it and choose "Unmount".  Otherwise, open the GParted program and look for the drive partitions that show having mount points.  (Menu -> System -> Partition Drives to open GParted.)  Right-click the partition(s), choose "Unmount" -- then close GParted and start the installer.

When I'm in the "installation type" screen I'm not sure whether the statement that LinuxLite is on the computer means that it's on the ssd or on the usb, and I don't know whether "erase disk and install" refers to the ssd or the usb.

That will never refer to the "live" USB.  That screen is showing that LL 2.4 is already on the SSD and is asking if you'd like to erase it and re-install over it or install a second instance of LL 2.4 along side the first install.  If you want to start over with a fresh install and just want the standard partition set-up, easiest choice is to "Erase disk and install Linux".  If you want to set-up partitions differently, then choose "Something else" option which will bring you to the partitioning page on your next screenshot.

If I choose "Something Else" I don't understand what the "devices" are referring to and in the dropbox at the bottom I finally can see my SSD but I'm not sure if "Device for boot loader installation" means that the "device" is coming to or going from the "device".

Don't use the "Something else" option unless you need/want to set-up partitions differently from standard use of a Root and Swap partition.  To answer your question though, "devices" shown here will be any hard drives, usb drives, sd cards that installer finds that can have Linux installed to them.  They'll be named /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, etc. and if there are existing partitions on the devices, those will be numbered -- eg. /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc.  This list will never show the "live" USB stick you are using as one of the options, unless you've set it up with additional partitions that would be detected separately.  (That's not something that could happen by accident.  It would require very deliberate actions on your part and you would absolutely "know" that you did that.)

"Device for boot loader installation" is asking where to install the Linux boot loader (called "grub").  For MBR partitioned disks (which yours is), that answer is normally the MBR (master boot record) of the target drive (device) -- /dev/sda in your case (with no partition number after the "a" in "sda").  Have a read through this link to get a better idea of how drives and partitions are referred to in Linux:  Guide to disks and disk partitions in Linux.


Based on your screenshots, it looks like LL 2.4 is already installed to the SSD.  So, I'm assuming that something about that install got messed-up and you're trying to re-install.  If that's the case, easiest thing to do is just pick the "Erase disk and install Linux" option from the installer.  It will automatically replace what you have on the SSD and install the boot loader correctly to the MBR without you having to manually direct any of it.