Ubuntu :: Removing Grub \ Install On An External Drive, But It Doesn't Boot?
Feb 6, 2010
I tried to install Ubuntu on an external drive, but it doesn't boot, but it installed GRUB on my main HD, and now I can't even boot Windows. I only get a "grub rescue" prompt. I need to remove GRUB. How to do it?
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
I dual booted opensuse along with vista. I installed opensuse in extended partition, with grub and gave the option as "boot from extended partition". Now everything is fine. I am able to boot into suse as well as vista. Now how can I restore my vista bootloader? I want to uninstall openSuse. When I try restore mbr from hard disk. There is absolutely no change!
When openSUSE was installed, GRUB information was installed in the Extended partition rather than in the MBR.
I have a triple boot system: Windows XP Pro, openSUSE, and another popular distro on Linux. The other distro put GRUB info in MBR. Now when I boot up it goes to member first. If I select openSUSE, the GRUB info in the extended partion is accessed and a 2nd selection screen is displayed.
I tried reloading the GRUB data for openSUSE selceting to install it in MBR but this does not seem to work.
How do I get rid of the GRUB stuff in the extended partition so that the 2nd GRUB screen does not get displayed?
I have used CentOS for a while and have never run into this issue. I searched all over and didn't see a similar issue anywhere, I did an install of CentOS as a server (no GUI) with only the base. Partition is /boot ext3, size of 100MB. The rest of the drive is partitioned as / with ext3. This is being done on a CompactFlash card of 32GB in size. The BIOS sees it as an IDE drive.
When the install completes and the system reboots, the grub stops at the grub> prompt. There is no menu for OS options. If I do the following commands: grub>root (hd0,0) grub>kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.el5 root=LABEL=/ grub>initrd /initrd-2.6.18-194.el5.img grub>boot
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
I have an external hard drive connected to my iMac. I have installed Ubuntu on unallocated space on my external, the first time I chose to put the bootloader on the external but when I booted up the computer and held the Option key it didn't recognize an OS to boot from.I am currently reinstalling Ubuntu but placing the bootloader on the internal hard drive hoping that the Mac boot menu will recognize an OS to boot from.
I have an Acer netbook that I installed Remix on. Now I can't get the thing to boot from the CD drive which is connected via the USB port. Any suggestions? I set the boot order with the CD drive first and the HD last.
I have a seagate SATA hard drive that was running a mythtv distro. It had 3 partitions, EXT3, swap, and XFS. I started having I/O errors on boot and saw error messages on both the EXT3 and the XFS partitions. I also heard some clunking sounds on the drive when it was reading, so I thought hell, the drive is dead.
I have since replaced the drive and everything is back up and running on the replacement drive. I thought hell, the seagate drive is toast, but I just want to verify it with some sort of tool. I have the hard drive in a Vantec NexStar external hard drive case (SATA->USB) and found there was a tool called badblocks. Ran badblocks on it, which ran for 24ish hours and found no bad blocks. I also didn't notice any clunking sounds while it was running.
I ran Code: badblocks -n -v /dev/sdb Is badblocks a proper test to run on external hard drives or was I just wasting my time? Is there any way that I can really test it without removing it and connecting it with SATA to the motherboard?
I have a flash drive that I used on my old netbook to temporally hold a copy of ubuntu as the netbooks internal drive was dead. I have since got a new netbook and wanted to return the flash drive to simple removable storage. I've re-partitioned it back to 14gb fat32 2gb ext2 and everything is working fine. Except that if I try to boot with the key inserted grub loads then errors imminently (sort of obvious if grub is still in the MBR but there is no menu.lst file anymore...) Googling for removal of GRUB just gives me loads of hits for how to restore windows mbrs when you dont want to keep linux anymore. None of these methods seem to have any targeting. I need to remove grub from sdb while keeping it intact in sda. sdb shouldn't even be bootable, so that when boot from usb is higher in the bios than boot from hdd the usb key is ignored and the hdd is booted as normal.
Dual Booting my laptop and unable to change the Boot Records on the drive. Not because I dont know how, but my primary OS will fail to boot(win7).
I have drive partitioned as follows... sda1 = Win7 system (default install) sda2 = Win7 Main (default install) sda3 = swap sda4 = Extension (I think thats what its called) sda5 = / (ext4)
What I need is a boot cd or perferably Grub installed on a 256MB Thumb drive with the options to load the installed system from sda5.
Ubuntu 10.10 doesn't boot at all. The liveCD only boots once every like 30 attempts, installing from liveCD froze, but the Alternate CD worked and installed ubuntu. Now when I try to boot into it using GRUB, it freezes at the beginning of the boot process.With normal boot it freezes at line: Starting AppArmor profiles Skipping profile in /etc/apparmor.d/disable: usr.bin.firefox.With recovery mode it freezes even before showing me anything
A little kinda like the liveCD, if I try like 30 times, it might manage to boot once in normal mode.That line keeps on repeating, the the xxx.xxx integer changes each time, and this goes on forever.I tried removing my floppy drive, but it didn't help.I tried to boot with fd0=noprobeThe one time it booted, when I restarted, it froze while trying to restart.
I am setting up ubuntu on a new(ish) HP desktop and it has been pretty painful. My issues up until now are in this thread: [URL] I marked that one as solved and am starting a new one as the initial issue for starting that thread was indeed solved. Here is where I am at now: [URL] I've found that I can just type exit, sometimes, once sometimes 10 times, and ubuntu will eventually boot. My main concern is that the grub menu only appears intermittently at boot. If I hit ESC to specify a boot device, it will show up after I pick, but if I just turn the PC on, it seems to be hit or miss. Also, as an aside, when I do get the grub menu, it is version 1.9.xxxxx. Should I be using 2?
Once in a grub menu, I follow the instructions here: [URL] and that lets me fully boot without getting the above 'gave up waiting...'error. The only problem is that this seems to only be temporary. When I reboot and get to a grub menu again, hit e to edit, it's back to what it was before....
I am trying to install freeBSD on F14 (with LUKS encryprion). freeBSD doesn't detect hard-drive, probably coz of LUKS? Now what can I do within F14 to format harddrive and remove LUKS to get in a shape that I can install freeBSD or other OS.
I've recently installed Vmware on Vista and I am using that to run Linux. I prefer this method over duel booting as I can quickly switch between the two OSes. So here is what I would like to do.
1) Remove swap partition (not needed).
2) Remove Linux and format partition to NTFS for windows use.
3) Remove Grub.
What I don't want to do.
1) Reinstall Windows Vista (Lots of programs installed).
When I boot, the device I'm looking for shows up but it isn't detected inthe file system. I have two drives, a 500g and a 1Tb in a dual usb case.When I do sudo fdisk -l, I get:
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
i have a problem when i use test drive, it doesn't boot into the operating system. it just look like in dos when i login. what is wrong? shouldn't test drive let me see how its look when i use the live CD?
i recently started dual booting with Kubuntu using an external HDD. GRUB works fine, but it sees two Kubuntu's on the drive. In GRUB, i see "Ubuntu-Linux Kernel (for some reson its not identified as Kubuntu) on /dev/sdb1 (external drive)", then i see recovery mode beneath it, and the exact same line right below recovery mode, followed by another recovery mode. strangely, selecting either one boots into kubuntu no problem at all. is this a problem and is there anyway i can delete the duplicate entries?
With the generous help from caf4926 and please_try_again, i was able to boot into Ubuntu 9.10 with suse's grub legacy.Now I have another problem that i'd need help on, I added a new IDE hard drive for storage and it became sda and the original sda with 3 OSes changed to sdb. Grub can't boot into any OSes except windows 7. Well, i can still boot into Ubuntu if i change the boot option from
I want to Re install windows 7, but when i do so it removes GRUB making me unable to boot into Ubuntu. Is there any way in which i can install Windows without removing GRUB?
I need to re-format an external drive. All the instructions I have found start with figuring out where the drive is mounted (sda, hda, etc.). However, as soon as my RH Linux machine sees the drive's format (ntfs) it decides it won't even mount it in the first place. Gives me an error message. Also, the drive doesn't show up at all via "df -k". how to convince RHL to be a little more accepting?
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
In Ubuntu 10.04 all I had to do was turn on my external hard drive and it would automatically be detected and mounted. I just switched over to Ultimate Edition, which I think is Ubuntu 10.04 with a lot of stuff added on to it. The funny thing is when I turn on the external hard drive it doesn't get mounted, and I don't think it's even being detected. I looked in gparted and it doesn't show up there. If I boot into Ubuntu 10.04 and turn on the hard drive it still gets detected and mounted, so there's nothing wrong with it. Ultimate Edition can detect other things connected to USB, like my iPod, so I'm wondering why it can't detect my hard drive.
Edit: When I do tail -f /var/log/messages and if the drive gets detected, this is what it says:
[ 230.520892] usb 1-2.4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6 [ 230.639400] usb 1-2.4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice [ 230.639717] scsi9 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices [ 235.631550] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access Maxtor OneTouch 0122 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
The default (graphical) installer did not work on my PC (i7 quadcore 8 GB DDR3). I have installed Ubuntu using the alternative installer (Desktop, 64 bit) on my external USB drive. I installed grub on the MBR of the second drive (/dev/sdb) as I did not want to touch my (first) Windows disk. After reboot (chosing the USB drive as boot device, else Windows is booted) grub reports an error and enters the rescue mode. I tried all possible combinations of "root=(hdX,Y)" in grub.cfg to no avail.
I repeated the whole procedure but now disconnected the internal HD with Windows. Installation went smooth again (Windows disk was not seen this time), but after reboot (the internal drive connected or not) I again get (slightly different this time) grub error: can not find file.
I have a hard time mounting two external drives on my Suse 11.3. When I use the device notifier gadget both drives get mounted in /media/<drive name>, the vfat drive is read-only though. However, I would like to mount both drives under /<drive name> in separate directories and rw. I looked at the devices in /dev/ and entered the device name to fstab, set the mount point, file system (vfat, and ntfs-3g) and set 'rw,noauto,exec,user,sync 0 0'.
This way I could mount my vfat drive read-only under /<drive name>, but not the ntfs one. After a reboot i noticed that the external drives get different IDs in /dev. E.g. what I had in my fstab under /dev/sdc1 got /dev/sdf1, and /dev/sdc was unknown. I am doing something wrong here, what worked in 11.0 does not seem to work here.
I have a 1TB usb External Hard drive (Segate), I would like to install linx on that drive. I tried red Hat it does not find hard drive. I run open suse, I partition the hard drive. After installation of disk 1 it reboots, at that point it does not go to usb external drive.
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.
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?