"...tried and failed multiple times to install it onto the Precision M20's "hard drive" (actually a micoSD card on an IDE-to-microSD-card adapter). Every time,

"...tried and failed multiple times to install it onto the Precision M20's "hard drive" (actually a micoSD card on an IDE-to-microSD-card adapter). Every time, the installation looked successful. I even checked it with Gparted, which showed that the partition had been created, made bootable, and data had been written to it. Then, when I rebooted, no partition existed!" Some MicroSD cards fail in a "Read Only" mode where they pretend to accept new data, but don't actually write anything.