Ubuntu Installation :: Grub2 External Hard Drive - Fails And I Get A Grub Rescue
Feb 8, 2010
I've tried to be clever but as usual I didn't think before acting and missed a small detail.
I have recently installed karmic (dual booting with Vista) on my dell xps laptop. The install went fine, I'm very happy with my new OS.
I bought a new Seagate 500GB portable external HDD. I got a bit over-excited and installed karmic on the external drive. This worked fine and I got a lovely (but slow to appear) Grub2 menu showing my vista and both ubuntu options.
My problem is that now, when I unplug the external drive, Grub fails and I get a grub rescue> prompt. So I need the external drive to be plugged in if I want to boot.
It seems I have done something to the grub configuration. I have read around the subject but I am not confident about how best to proceed.
I understand there is an 'advanced' option in the installer which will allow me to choose where to install grub. Presumably I want it on the internal drive so that I can boot without the external one plugged in.
Am I right in thinking I can just pop in my install disk and redo the installation?
If I indicate I want to install Grub on the internal drive, which partition should I aim for?
Will I get a grub option for booting to the external drive?
Will I be able to plug the external drive into a different machine and boot from it?
I haven't done anything with the fresh install on the external drive so I don't mind losing that.
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Aug 9, 2011
I tried doing a search and couldn't find anything relatively recent on the topic so here is my question.
I am fairly new to the linux world and am in the process of trying out a couple different distributions. I am doing this by installing them to an external hard drive. This allows me to test them out without affecting my main system in any way. I have already tried openSUSE and it installed with no problems. I am trying to install Ubuntu, however when the installation tries to install GRUB2 it fails asking me for a different location to install it to.
When installing I unhook all drives from the computer except for the dvd drive, usb drive I'm installing from, and the external hard drive I am trying to install Ubuntu to. I'm not sure what else may be of use.
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Jun 28, 2011
I have an hp laptop and i had ubuntu on it for 3 years. my hard drive started to fail a while ago (i had ubuntu 10 on it until 1 week ago) and a then it all went black...I took the laptop to a repair shop, they told me it was the disc, so i bought a new disc, installed it on my laptop and reinstalled the new ubuntu 11. so far so good. i have now a working OS, internet connection and i can in fact type this message.
The thing is: all my files are on the old drive, which doesn't load/boot/start/read anymore. I have tested it on some friends's pc, tried a few HD disgnostic tools, they all send the same message: "fail"
I then tried to mount my old drive (with all my precious files in it) on my laptop as an external drive (usb) hoping that ubuntu 11 could read it as an external usb key: it gets read by the system, but it shows no files at all. it also shows an error message saying the drive can not be mounted, with some "sdb1" thing. i am sorry but i'm really dumb when it comes to tech language.
Then i tried to boot it on start-up but i got the grub rescue> thing and nothing else, just a sad, blinking cursor to recover my files,i have also tried testdisk but couldn't understand very well how to use it, and then photorec, from which i recovered bits and pieces of files, with no name. some of them are just parts some of them are complete.
My problem is: i have to get access to my files, as I use them for work, i couldn't do a back-up recently and i have some real important deadline to meet... for which i need those files. is there any way i could solve the grub issue and have that drive load/mount again as external usb?
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May 25, 2010
I have Ubuntu/Vista dual boot desktop with Single HDD (200GB) that i cloned to an external USB HDD (320GB) using clonezilla. My intention is to use the external HDD as a backup to up running in case my 3 year old desktop HDD fails. To make sure the clone is good to use if need, i connected external HDD to USB port and tried boot from it but got "Error 18". I tried to Google got some infoDid a fdisk -lu and got the following.
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
[code]....
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Dec 20, 2010
dual boot ubuntu / windows on seperate drives ubuntu drive fails today and now boots saying cannot find device (id) grub rescue>
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Jan 7, 2010
I have windows 7 64bit on an internal harddrive, a larger internal harddrive for storage and a 1tb mybook external for storage. I have an ubuntu 9.10 iso burned to a cd that i got from the ubuntu site and I had previously installed dual boot successfully on my other computer, a laptop.
I went to install it on my desktop as well and when i was selecting how much space to allocate i noticed it was using the mybook and not the internal. I couldn't see an option to change which harddrive it used so in my ignorance i allocated 50gigs to ubuntu on my 1tb external mybook. This was obviously the wrong decision as after restarting the grub bootloader would not open and grub rescue came up everytime after that.
I have tried booting from the cd, reinstalling from the cd, and using a windows 7 repair cd. I can't even get into non installed version of ubuntu to try and use terminal. I have spent the 5 hours on the internet trying to figure out what to do and i have no clue. I want to get ubuntu off the mybook and get back on windows 7 where i can then reinstall ubuntu properly on one of my internal harddrives.
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May 14, 2010
I'm new to the ubuntu forums as well as ubuntu. I'm excited to learn more about linux itself as well as ubuntu. I got ubuntu 10.04 running on my toshiba L505D laptop by disabling acpi in the boot commands. My first question is how do i do this permanently, is this bad, and would updating fix the issue? If so how would I go about updating.
Secondly, when the external hard drive I installed ubuntu on is not plugged in to the laptop, GRUB rescue comes up. I kind of like this because it provides a level of hardware security. I would however like to know how to load my windows partition encase the external hard drive fails.
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Jun 17, 2010
I have a Onetouch 4 mini 160GB I bought a year ago. I t used to work fine but all of a sudden it started to become a problem device. My home pc has two operating systems on it: Windows 7 and ubuntu 10.04 lucid. the drive often fails to load on both systems. Sometimes it's recognized, but the reads are very slow and opening a folder on the drive takes around 120 seconds. Itried reformatting the whole drive, chicking it with chkdsk but it didn't help. Now I have around 70 GB of data on the drive. On my office pc I don't have such a problem and the drive works fine.
My home pc has an Asus P5B motherboard and intel core 2 duo cpu. I tried unplugging other usb devices, plugging in the extra power cord (data + data/power) and it didn't help. The drive also makes beeping sounds when I try to browes the files on it. I'm sure thid is not OS related as both Windows and Linux have the same issue. This is the output of dmesg | tail command on linux. You can see the os keeeps "resetting" the drive:
[Code]....
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Jul 13, 2011
Downloaded Ubuntu 10.04.1 Desktop AMD64, tried to install it to a cleand HDD using the whole HDD, i.e. gave it permission to use the whole HDD. Installation process appeared to run OK but when it came to the restart it just fired up the message
error: out of disk
grub rescue>
I've searched this forum and found numerous references to these error messages but cannot make head nor tail of the diagnostic suggestions. Apart from anything else they suggest strings of command lines which I don't understand and can't enter anyway since they don't correspond to my keyboard layout (if I hit > or ) something completely different appears on the screen). Is there someone here who can provide a step-by-step solution in lay language ? Or is there such a thing as a bootable file which can be downloaded and inserted into my CD drive to correct this problem ?
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Jun 19, 2011
I have windows on my box, I have fedora 14 on my external that goes through my usb. Grub is installed on my usb. Since the only thing stored on my external was fedora i really didn't have to do much to it. just go into bios and boot from usb. Now that im using fedora more, Id like to add Vista to my choices. I guess the numbers change once your using an external drive. Ive read some of the problems like mine but they didn't quite do it. Im going to inclose 2 screen shots of my drives/partitions and my grub.conf.
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
[code]....
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Jan 14, 2009
I have 2 ubuntu's: 1 on my ineternal hard drive, 1 on my external
When I startup without my ext drive =>GRUB error 21.
And when I plug it in I can choose: the standard ubuntu kernel is the one on my external, and the original one is listed under other...
I'd like to be able to startup without external hard drive and make the ubuntu on my internal drve the standard.
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Oct 24, 2010
First time poster and recent Ubuntu adopter. I recently installed 10.10 on my main HD alongside a separate windows (xp) partition (it worked perfectly). Then I decided to get fancy and installed 10.10 to a flash drive directly from a live cd. I attempted to boot from the flash drive, and got a black screen with a blinking underscore for about 10 minutes, then I forcefully rebooted. Now, whenever I attempt to boot at all from my main HD I get "error: no such device and a ton of misc numbers. And the flash drive will not allow me to boot from it. Currently, I'm working within the Live CD.
I have a few projects I need to complete with Dreamweaver inside XP, so recovering it completely would be nice.
Code:
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010
============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================
=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #1 for (,msdos1)/boot/grub.
=> No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdf
[Code].....
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Oct 24, 2010
i am a newbie to linux and i am stuck at the GRUB rescue prompt at the startup.i have dual boot windows and Ubntu 10.04.I want to remove GRUB2 from Harddrive itself.can u suggest ant command on GRUUB recue prompt ?
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Jun 19, 2011
I would like to install Linux Ubuntu 11.04 on an external hard drive - its partitioned and ready for Linux.I've downloaded and burnt the .iso file to a DVD so its all good so far...First of all... is this possible without messing up my macbook? I don't particularly want to break into my macbook to disconnect the hard drive (I read on a tutorial for a previous version of Ubuntu that I'd have to do that... - does it still apply to 11.04?) - as it voids the warranty (I checked ).The reason I ask this is because I had a friend who partitioned their internal hard drive and installed Ubuntu on it. But after installation was complete they couldn't boot up Windows 7 or Ubuntu... and it resulted in them having to clean install Windows 7... - I don't want to end up in that situation
Second... If it is possible to install it without messing up my macbook... - Do I just follow the install instructions but just make sure that where possible I make sure that everything is installed on my external hard drive?...I really need someone to put my mind at rest that everything will run smoothly and that I'll be able to run Mac OS X as usual but also that I'll be able to boot from my external hard drive to run Ubuntu.
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Jan 11, 2011
It started when I wanted to dual boot Windows 7 and Opensuse off of my netbook (No DVD/CD drive) I tried install suse from an external hard drive and I botched it. I ended up erasing EVERYTHING off of my internal netbook hard drive. Windows and all.
Well, I had a couple of other computers so I studied up and eventually successfully installed OpenSUSE 11.2 on my external hard drive (11.3 being the one that I accidentally erased everything with, so kinda scared of it) and now I want to install openSUSE 11.2 on my internal netbook hard drive.
I can not use disks
I can not use a flash drive (For some reason, even if I make it bootable, it will not load up, this could be because it's actually a 8GB microSD card that is placed in a USB card reader.)
I can not use an external hard drive because that's what I'm running suse off of.
I've tried reading up on how to install suse on another drive off of the hard drive and I've gotten as far as whenever I boot up the netbook with the suse external hard drive connected it will ask to boot into OpenSUSE, the Fail Safe, or to install OpenSuse. When I select to install it it gives me the Error 18 Unknown File system.
I've tried formatting the internal hard drive twice. One as NTFS and again as EXT4. Neither seems to effect it other than when it's ext4 I can open it and it contains a Lost and Found folder.
When I interrupt the boot sequence by pressing c and going to the terminal and I use the root (hd +TAB command it tells me I have a hd0 and a hd1. The hd1 only has 1 partition which is ext4, which I'm assuming hd1 is the internal hard drive (I'm not sure how to check) and the hd0 is the external hard drive, which has three partitions. One with an unknown file system and two with ext4. When I try to enter the set up from the terminal it gives me the same error for any thing I put it (e.g. root (hd0,0) gives the same error as root (hd0,1), or root (hd0,2) and root (hd1,0)
Something like it cannot locate these two files I'm assuming it needs to boot. If anyone finds this relevant I'll retry it and post the files its missing.
I've been searching for awhile and can't find any threads that can solve my problem. From other threads, however, I have noticed that I should probably include my menu.lst, listed below
Code:
I have also ran the boot info script and received the RESULTS.txt file it generates. Listed below
Code:
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Mar 30, 2011
i have installed fedora 14 with so many libraries ,development tools installed on my pc but i usually have to present some projects which can run on my system .........and can't be executed or compiled due to absence of libraries and tools there so, i there some way to so that i can use this current installation on my hard drive of my pc to some external media like external hard disk and plug and use that installation anywhere on any system..
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Feb 2, 2011
I'm a newbie and can't get to linux on my external hard drive. I recently did a full install of Ubuntu 10.10 and am currenly running XP on my main drive. When I boot I can choose to go to my ext hard drive, which holds Ubuntu, but I'm stuck with a grub command line. What do I need to do to boot into Ubuntu from grub?
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May 6, 2011
I was wondering if it were possible to run and boot Ubuntu off of an external hard drive, I have a Seagate Free Agent 1.5 Terabyte external hard drive, I formatted it to FAT32 but am willing to reformat if necessary. I just really want to be able to have Ubuntu to run off of an external hard drive.
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Apr 30, 2010
After upgrading to 10.04 from 9.10 Win7 wouldn't startup any more. So I tried this HowTo: [URL] to restore Grub2. But now each time I boot up I get this two lines: error file not found grub rescue> I have NO idea what to do.
[Code]...
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Jan 25, 2010
I got a dell inspiron 1501 laptop with a 80Gb sata drive what is the best solution to add data storage space for someone that love to have multiples operating systems at hand Note: I use mostly linux so I won't need to change my laptop for many years maybe ...
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Sep 30, 2010
I cant boot from my External HD with ubuntu installed.
I get this message:
error: file not found. grub rescue>
In an attempt to fix this problem, I tried using the following sudo command:
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sda5 does not exist, I tried 4, then 3, then 2, and it worked, but that was a partition of my internal HD containing windows 7.
I also typed in:
sudo grub-install --root directory=/mnt /dev/sda
not I get the following error when I try to boot from my internal HD:
error: no such device: 57288a24-5d12-4fb1-b27e-eb09a1f9b7c6. grub rescue>
Is there a way to get grub to boot into windows 7 again?
When I type:
sudo fdisk -l
I receive a list of my drives and their partitions, This is my assumption as to what drive is
Which:
/dev/sda1 = Vista loader, for Windows 7
/dev/sda2 = Windows 7 (At least I hope its still there.)
/dev/sdb1 = Bootable Flash Drive.
/dev/sdc1 = External HD.
The text from the terminal is as follows:
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8da4c52c
Device, Boot, Start, End, Blocks, Id, System.
/dev/sda1, 1, 1355, 10877952, 27, Unknown.
/dev/sda2 *, , 1355, 38914, 301961224, 7, HPFS/NTFS. (The commands changed this from FAT32)
Disk /dev/sda: 8054 MB, 8054636032 bytes
8 heads, 32 sectors/track, 61451 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 256 * 512 = 131072 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier:0x00000000
Device, Boot, Start, End, Blocks, Id, System.
/dev/sdb1, *, 1, 61452, 7865839+, b, W95 FAT32.
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 =8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier:0x0000a613a
Device, Boot, Start, End, Blocks, Id, System.
/dev/sdc1, *, 1, 30402, 244197376, 83, Linux.
Eventually I would like to fix the error I get when I boot from the external, I would like to to boot to ubuntu, but for now I am concerned with getting my internal HD to boot windows 7. Where I originally found the terminal commands to begin with. I think sda5 is where linux was installed in the example I found, and didn't realize it.
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Jun 12, 2011
I have grub 1.98 and it boots fine with out my usb hdd connected but brings me to grub rescue when it is.
It takes me to grub rescue and tells me that it cannot find device: "UUID"
This UUID is not even the UUID of the drive that I cannot plug in if I want my computer to boot to grub.
Here is blkid with the usd hdd plugged in after boot:
Code:
/dev/sda1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="BA56FD4B56FD0941" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: UUID="E23E02D93E02A71F" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda3: UUID="9579da2d-5ba0-407c-a95d-9f134a1417f3" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda5: UUID="caefabd7-c8f0-4fca-8005-d682ae939b91" TYPE="swap"
[Code].....
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Feb 20, 2010
I looked around on these forums and google and came to no solution so, I decided to make this thread. I'm using Windows XP and after I downloaded and tested out Ubuntu 9.10, I decided I'd like it as a second OS, can I install Ubuntu on my external hard drive (1TB)? would installing on an external hard drive take away the risks of losing data etc? If I installed Ubuntu on my external hard drive would it delete any files already on my hard drive?
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Apr 8, 2010
is there a way to install Ubuntu -from- an external hard drive. For example, let's say, you have a complete Ubuntu system with everything (no need to download additional packages/softwrae/etc anymore) , but you can't use remastersys to create an ISO with it because it is way over 10GB in size. Much larger than any DVD you could burn that newly created ISO to.. (besides remastersys is limited to the size of a DVD-r anyways)
Maybe someone has tried this before? Someone has created a dedicated large hard drive that is essentially the same thing as a ubuntu installation usb flash drive, to boot from an then install Ubuntu onto another "new" hard drive? I think it would be nice to have a hard drive (external usb or even better, an internal hdd drive i could hot swap to each new computer I have that I wish to install it onto.. ) And I think it would be so much faster to install from a Sata internal HDD drive than a USB pendrive or a cd/dvd rom, right?
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Jun 8, 2010
I've been using Ubuntu for a few weeks now, and I like it a lot, but when I used the automatic partitioning tool on my portable hard drive (where I was installing it, it was my first time) I accidentally allotted half of the 640 GB to Ubuntu. Much more than it needs, it's unable to be accessed by Windows now. (I wanted around 40 GB for Ubuntu. Still more than it needs, but not too cluttered.)
However, I can't figure out how to erase the partition from the drive. I tried going in with the Windows Vista Drive Manager (or whatever it's called, the one that lets you manage partitions) and couldn't erase the partition. (I don't think I'd have any problems converting the partition back and combining the pieces again after doing so to work from scratch.) Does anybody have any idea how to do this so I can reinstall Ubuntu properly?
Oh, and GRUB is on the portable as well, so I won't have trouble with Windows booting up afterward, it's the main booter. (When the portable HD isn't plugged in, my laptop just boots Windows without asking about Ubuntu.)
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Feb 5, 2011
I have a Windows machine and a Linux machine with currently no hard drive. I have 250 GB external USB hard drive that I use on Windows with about 50GB of files on it. I want to install Ubuntu on it and share between Windows and Linux. I have Ubuntu on a CD that allows me to run Linux on the Linux machine. When I try to install Ubuntu on the external hard drive (from the Linux machine) it indicates that it will allocate about 98 GB for Ubuntu and 150 GB for files (with 50 GB of existing files). Then it says something about partitioning something (I think) that might take a long time. Does this mean that Ubuntu will take up all the free space on the hard drive? Does it also mean that when I connect the hard drive to the Windows machine, it will see two partitions when previously there was only one?
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Feb 14, 2011
I have downloaded UBUNTU 10.04 and saved to external hard drive since I have no CD drive in my note book. I want to install it from external hard drive what is the command and how can I install it.
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Apr 19, 2011
I tried to do this and something went wrong, and caused so much trouble that I decided I didn't want to do it at all. Then I changed my mind today, and decided I'll try again even after all that happened.
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May 10, 2011
I am having trouble booting ubuntu 11.04 from my external hard drive, i did a custom instal using the 11.04 CD.
i made 4 partitions
/dev/sda1 ext2 /boot 1024mb (1gb)
/dev/sda5 swap 4096mb (4gb)
/dev/sda6 ext4 / 10240mb (10gb)
/dev/sda7 ext4 /home 204800mb (200gb)
and i put grub on the one what was mounted to /boot.
but my problem is when i restart my computer it just starts up windows.
my external hard drive is on, i have it set to boot from removable storage or something like ehtat first. i forget what i just know that booting from my internal hard drive is set to last so it should boot from the external.
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Mar 13, 2011
10.10 installation fails: not paritition nor hard drive visible, Gparted does not start: trying to install 10.10 as a 2nd boot to windows Xp MCE installation. I get the the stage "allocate drive space", but there is not device nor hard drive visible. if I click install now I get an error message, no root file system defined. please correct this from the partitiioning menu.If I sart GPARtition, it does not start.I am totally lost, I have two parititions on hard drive that i created with fresh XP MCE installation, one dedicated to XP, other I reserverd for Ubuntu. Neither one is viisible at the installation.
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