Hi @Blackcloud 

It sounds like this lecturer is just not paying attention or is a bit clueless... or a bit of both.  There's a couple of reasons I can see the copying of the Ubuntu ISO file giving a 'disk full' error.  A dodgy SSD drive which is not as big as it claims but this is extremely unlikely from JBHifi, but wouldn't surprise me from eBay or Amazon where fakes are common.  The 2 likely reason I see are either that drive is still partitioned from the previous attempted VM/Ubuntu installation and your trying to copy it to a partition that is too small.  The other that the drive is formatted in a format like FAT32 with had a 4GB file size limit.  The Ubuntu ISO is about 5.6GB(?) so it would throw up and error in this case.

It's hard to see without see the drive, as I know you've been trying to get the Ubuntu thing working on the   Mac so i have no idea what state/format/partition structure the drive is in now.  You may need to use Disk Utility to see that the state of the drive is in, remove any partitions and reformat it back to a clean drive.  You could also then run a scan on it, just to be sure there's no physical errors on if it you suspect that.

This lecturer knows you've been trying to (using a Mac) install Ubuntu on the drive so these should have instantly been the first thing he checked.  Of course it's not going to look like the same drive plugged into someone's Windows laptop!  Their drive will be formatted as a standard windows compatible FAT32, or more likely, NTFS.

I'm sorry about how he mad you feel, that was totally unprofessional and out of line.  Not to mention unfair and has me doubting their level of basic knowledge.  Either way, it's no wonder you are upset, confused, and frustrated.

It's such a pity that because of his complete lack of... well everything... it's put you in the position it has and planning to drop the subject completely.  That's some A-grade teaching right there!

For what it's worth, i doubt there's anything wrong with the drive if it's giving a 'disk full' error.  If it was giving a read or write error, then yes, very possibly faulty.

I know it's hard but please try not to let your experience with this lecturer upset you too much.  None of it was your fault at all.  It's purely a Mac issue and a completely unhelpful lecturer.  I hope you do go back to the IT units later, as I think you would enjoy it in the right environment.  And i would hate this to be your main experience with learning IT.  It should be far, far more fun, interesting, and fulfilling than that.