[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Booting a USB hard drive



On Mon, 09 May 2011 09:02:45 -0700, Peter Bonucci wrote:

> On Sunday, May 08, 2011 10:17:47 pm Klaus Wolf wrote:

>> I think that this is not a debian related problem, The BIOS of your
>> Laptop has to bi figured to use the USB-Drive for boot.
>> 
> 
> The BIOS of this computer boots from all of my other USB drives.  The
> problem is this particular drive model (Western Digital My Passport
> Essential.)
> 
> Booting a USB drive when the drive and computer don't cooperate is an
> old problem.  People solved it under Debian years ago.  I just don't
> know how they solved it and search engines didn't help.

There shouldn't be any mistery for this. If the BIOS is capable of 
booting from a USB device but the drive where Debian has been installed  
is bypassed by the BIOS, I would check that:

1/ GRUB is installed into the MBR of the USB disk.

2/ Partition where "/boot" is installed is marked with the bootable flag 
(if there is no dedicated partition for "/boot", then "/" should be the 
one to be marked).

3/ The system can be properly booted from an external source (i.e., using 
a LiveCD of SuperGrubDisk).

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


Reply to: