just flashed a USB drive (using etcher) and tried to install Haiku on a pretty modern HP laptop, model 14-dq0760dx.
the live environment worked fine (for the most part, didn’t seem to recognize the network card but that’s a future me problem) but trying to install got me a “No compatible partition” error, and when i tried to partition the disk it just didn’t recognize the 128gb SSD. i could only format the USB drive.
tried both stable and nightly, for what its worth. both couldn’t find the SSD, both in the installer and the live environment.
(also, just in case anyone like me searches for this in the future - at the moment you can’t install Haiku with Ventoy, gotta flash the whole drive.)
This laptop seem to have eMMC storage instead of SSD. eMMC is currently not supported, there is some work going on to change that. See [GSoC 2026] eMMC Storage Support
Running Haiku here on a HP laptop 17-cp1010nB just fine, as @brunobastardi mentioned, format the empty partition as BFS and install Haiku there, if the system is using EFI, cp (don’t know how installing EFI file is supported in nightly), cp the efi file from the USB to the EFI partition. Worked out OK here.
Just as other members here recommended - use an another USB thumbdrive or an SSD/HDD storage drive in an USB mobile case.
I have installed Haiku since Beta3 (Beta3 was only 32 bit) on several USB thumbdrives - both Haiku 32 and 64 bit as well. Now I’m on Haiku 64 bit and using identical Samsung 512 GB thumbdrives (Beta5 and Nightly) UEFI and legacy boot from them. I partitioned 4 primary partitions (MS-DOS type) : 1 FAT : 128 MB - haiku-esp , for EFI data . Do not try to format Fat32 LBA - this combo do not work in Drivesetup in case partition type EFI was selected at partition setup - this is a special FAT partition it seems, let it on default. You can mount the esp partition of the installer image and copy its content from there to the formatted new EFI System Partition on your new USB drive.
For Legacy BIOS boot of Haiku 64bit you need install ‘bootman’. It is hiding in Installer’s one and only small Menu item. It will place bootman through steps onto the target USB drive, as zero step making a backup about actual MBR on target ‘disk’ , selecting the target drive itself first, then setting up the bootable partitions on it. Works fine - I liked it recently when I met with and tried out before a reFind-setup-adventure. 1 BFS : 192 GB - Haiku and apps only with /home dir. ( recomemded 2048 kB cluster size, that can be mounted and readable on Linux Mint installed on SATA SSD)
1 BFS : 300+ GB - DATA_MEDIA (On Nightly, formatted with the available biggest cluster size - 8192, if I remember well, that cannot be mounted on Linux - the BeFS, aka BFS Linux kernel driver seems cannot handle those non-default cluster size formatted BFS filesystems)
I formatted this way as I copy/store large chunk of media files and some data there - those I would not copy with a Haiku installer. It is because all Haiku Install can be cloned anywhere altogether with /home dir. with Installer - not only the Haiku Live/Installer image.
1 FAT : ~ 20-30 GB - Fat32 , created for shared storage space between OS environments both 2 Haikus and Haiku and Linux or else. On Nightly USB I store the Haiku anyboot images and some files actually I would copy from Haiku or copy to Haiku. Not all Linux can mount BeFS (e.g. Fedora, as for example BeFS driver classified experimental, so they exclude by default the experimental drivers) and there is Windows and BSD too. I have one working Windows 7, and I plan some BSD rig - Thinkpad based - shared with Nobara Linux later.
A word worth a hundred …. any USB storage a viable solution to install Haiku - in case
–> you selected the large enough / best fit size storage drive to your needs for your Haiku usage/goal
–> do not buy cheap USB thumbdrive for install purpose
–> at least USB 2.0 interface, but actually (Beta5 and ‘Beta6’ Nightly ) USB 3.x interface works more stable in case storage purpose (it is my opinion through experience).
thanks!