Ubuntu Installation :: Bootloader On External Drive?
Oct 1, 2010
I recently installed Maverick RC to a partition on my external drive.Following the GUI, I used the advanced option and installed the bootloader to "sdb" and had Maverick install to a partition on the external drive (I want the GRUB to be on the external drive so I can boot directly into Win7 when I don't have the external connected). And, to note, I did set my BIOS to boot from the external drive first, I have that option in my BIOS. So, when I finished installing, I rebooted and all I got was a "-". Not even a "disk not bootable message". It just hung at "-" .
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Jul 10, 2009
I've been running Debian Lenny kernel 2.6.26 w/ desktop kde3.5 on my laptop for a while, and im going to take a trip in which i will be unable to take wmy laptop with me. However, where i am going contains computers and i figured if i could install debian onto my external harddrive, i could just boot onto the other computers. I install it using the debianlenny-i386 dvd image. However whenever I try to boot it from a computer. Grub returns
Code:
Grub Loading...
Error 21
and then the blinkng cursor. On one site i found something saying "you may need to activat the drive" and some command-line instructions on how to do it. However the commands have faded from memory and i am now unable to find that site again. Could anyone offer insight on how to fix this "grub error 21" or how to activate it. I run primarily debian but i have a windows partition on one of my relative's computers.
Thank you in advance for the help!!!
btw I'm installing on a western digital 500gb "passport" external hard drive with ext3 and swap partitions.
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Dec 15, 2010
I am installing Ubuntu 10.04 server on a box with no optical drive, using a USB pen drive created using Ubuntu's Startup Disk Creator. Installation works just fine. However, instead of installing the MBR/grub2 on the hard drive it is installing it on the usb pen drive - i.e., I can't boot without the pen drive being the bootable device. I tried 'grub-install -root-directory=/boot /dev/sdb', but that didn't work.
I then tried 'apt-get purge grub-common' and then 'apt-get install grub-common'. There is a known bug where it tells you that there is no bootloader installed and do you want to continue without one Y/N - N just sends you straight back to the same dialog instead of installing. I'm not interested in recovering as it's a brand new install - easier just to redo it correctly from the start. So the question is this: how can I install from a USB pen drive and have the bootloader install properly?
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Mar 30, 2010
I just finished installing lucid lynx netbook to my jump drive (full install) to save room on my hard drive. It's working fine except the bootloader was installed to the jump drive as well, meaning I can't boot my computer without the jump drive. Is there any way to correct it so that the computer boot from the hard drive while keeping my install on the jump drive?
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Feb 5, 2010
I am helping my pal to get into Debian (yes first timer).He is running W7 on a 500G SATA HDD and he has another 250G SATA HDD that he wants Debian to go to.Will Debian install grub on the master bootloader even if the installation is going on a separate hard drive?I have dual boot before but on the same hard drive.
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Nov 11, 2015
I have an issue after the installation of debian 8.2 on an usb flash drive:
I had debian 8.2 and windows 8.1 running on a single SSD. Everything was fine. I wanted to install a second debian on a 32gb USB flash drive as a live system. After the installation I am not able to boot my debian (SSD) without the flash drive plugged in. I only get a grub rescue prompt. Booting windows still works. It is also possible to boot both debian systems if the USB drive is plugged in.
So it seems to me, that the debian bootloader was accidently installed to the USB flash drive and the original bootloader on the SSD does not work properly anymore. I used a netinst image from a second USB flash drive to install debian to the first USB flash drive.
Update fdisk output:
/dev/sda1 2048 2050047 2048000 1000M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2 2050048 2582527 532480 260M EFI System
/dev/sda3 2582528 4630527 2048000 1000M Lenovo boot partition
/dev/sda4 4630528 4892671 262144 128M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda5 4892672 223840255 218947584 104,4G Microsoft basic data
[Code] ....
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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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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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Apr 8, 2011
I am trying to install Ubuntu to an external usb hard drive (WD Elements SE). I am also choosing to install the grub bootloader to this disk (/dev/sdb) because I do not want anything modified on the internal drive. The installation appears to go okay, but when I try to boot to the usb drive, I get the error, "no boot sector on usb device" and it immediately falls back to my interal drive. I have tried this installation with both 10.10 (amd64) and 11.04 (amd64). How can I fix this?
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Apr 26, 2010
I disconnect my internal Windows hard drive first. Then run the installer from the Desktop CD. Everything works great.This is approximately the steps I take: I reboot, everything is good. I reconnect my internal hard drive, boot to Windows, reboot back to Kubuntu, everything is still good. I run updates and follow the instructions of the Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto. I reboot again, still no problems. At this point, I figure everything is OK and I have no worries. I boot to Windows and do some work in that environment. The next time I boot to the external Kubuntu hard drive, I get the following errors:
Begin: Starting AppArmor profiles ...
mount: mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /dev on /root/dev failed: No such file or directory
[code].....
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Jan 10, 2011
My original intention was to install a distribution of Ubuntu onto an external hard drive so i can use it on different computers. I first downloaded and burned a copy of Ubuntu 10.10 and booted my Acer laptop to it. I then plugged in my external hard drive and tried to install ubuntu onto it by partitioning the external hard drive. After I did that, I booted from the external hard drive on my laptop and it ran the new distribution i created. However, when I tried to boot it from a different computer it said something like "partition not found." So the next time I tried to install ubuntu onto the external hard drive with out partitioning it, using the entire drive. This is what started to cause problems.
Now when I start up my laptop without the external hard drive plugged in i get "error: no such device: xxxx..... grub rescue>. When I start it up with the hard drive plugged in a grub comes up with the new installation, my old ubuntu installation, and my old windows vista.
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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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Mar 13, 2010
I was wondering wether it is possible to boot an eee 901 from an external usb cd drive? (for those who are unfamiliar with the eee, it has no internal cd drive) The cd drive is not listed in the bios boot menu.
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Apr 2, 2010
I have windows on my internal drive on a dell D 800. I removed the drive and installed 9.10 on an external drive through the USB port. It works great, until I put the internal drive back in. With the F12 button on startup, and choosing the USB device to boot from, I get a grub recover>. If I remove the internal drive it boots fine with this method. I don't want to have to remove the HD each time. Do you have any idea what to do? Is there a command I can enter at the grub recover prompt?
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May 23, 2010
A while ago I installed Ubuntu as a dual-boot on my Windows XP machine. It worked ok, but I quickly realised that I had neither the hard drive space or RAM to really run a dual-boot machine properly. So, I tried to uninstall Ubuntu and return to XP. Unfortunately, I discovered that uninstalling is not that straightforward and I've ended up with a theoretical dual-boot but with the HD repartitioned so that Ubuntu takes up the smallest amount of space possible. Because of this, when the machine boots, I still get a GRUB boot screen where I have to manually select XP to continue with the boot. (Ubuntu is still the default boot OS - I don't know how to change this!)
I've now decided to install Ubuntu again but this time on an external USB hard drive. In my head (and this could be wrong) this will give me the option to run the machine with Ubuntu if the external HD is connected or run XP if it is not.I've seen several tutorials about how to do this, but none seem to address the situation where GRUB is the boot loader already. Some tutorials tell me to disconnect the internal HD before attempting to install Ubuntu on the external. Do I really need to do this? Another alternative I've heard of is to download a LIVE cd to the external drive and then run the OS from that instead of performing a full install. Any thoughts?
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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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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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Mar 19, 2010
If I wanted to install Ubuntu to an external eSATA drive, how would I do that and not screw up the GRUB install on my primary internal drive? I'm guessing I would want to tell that eSATA installation to install its GRUB to the first partition on that drive rather than on my primary internal, but then.... how would I get there from the GRUB on my primary drive?I guess my problem is that the eSATA drive is not always powered up, and I'm not sure what GRUB (on the primary internal drive) would do if there was an entry pointing to a drive that wasn't there (because it's not turned on)
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Apr 5, 2010
installed Ubuntu 9.10 in an internal SATA drive and used it for quite a while, but yesterday my laptop's graphics card decided to die, and it looks like it will be a full month until I get replacement m/b. Therefore, I bought an external USB SATA Hub for my laptop's drive, but I can't seem to be able to boot ubuntu from this drive. I'm trying to boot with this external usb hub attached to an old P4 machine with USB booting enabled.I get till the grub screen, but as soon as the message "Grub loading" appears, I get a message saying:error: no such partitionand I get a prompt as follows:grub-rescue>I guess grub is trying to boot to a different device name... It's weird, I thought Ubuntu should boot irregardless of which interface I use, be it SATA or USB.
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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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Jun 30, 2010
The thing is i want to have windows xp on my internal drive and ubuntu on the external. Not very hard but i want it so that i can choose what to boot when i start my computer and i also want to store other things then ubuntu on my external drive so i can use it in xp also
The reason i want ubuntu for is to use it while watching movies or chatting osv and use xp for games and my animation programs since they tend to be quite hard to get to work on ubuntu.
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Dec 28, 2010
I'm running Maverick on an older Stinkpad. I have a btrfs /home as a second partition on the internal HDDand a brand shiny new 3TB external USB western digital drive also formatted btrfs. I'm having a problem whenever I hibernate/suspend the laptop by closing the lid and start it back up later, the external drive won't remount unless I do a complete reboot. I have no entry in /etc/fstab for the external drive.Quote:Unable to mount "blah" DBus error org.gtk.Private.RemoteVolumeMonitor.Failed: An operation is already pending
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Jan 16, 2011
I have installed ubuntu 10.10 on and external usb drive and now my computer which runs XP will not boot unless the external drive is connected and on. Can I by pass this situation or do I have to uninstall ubuntu altogether and start over?
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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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Aug 1, 2011
I'm trying to format a 500 GB external drive with gparted in ubuntu 10.10 (I searched & didn't see this issue in the forum). I set up and formatted two partitions, one for fat32, and the other with ext3, which appears to format ok, but I can't use it. Both partitions show up and appear to mount, but the ext3 partition won't accept activity (make new folder, copy in files), while the fat32 partition works fine. Both partitions show up ok when I query in terminal "sudo fdisk -l"
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