Re: Booting a USB hard drive

[Peter Bonucci <peter.bonucci@verizon.net>]

On Wednesday, May 11, 2011 12:04:48 pm Camaleón wrote:
> On Wed, 11 May 2011 00:54:03 -0700, Peter Bonucci wrote:
> > On Tuesday, May 10, 2011 05:13:46 am Camaleón wrote:
> (...)
> 
> >> > Under SuperGrubDisk, "List devices/partitions", Grub doesn't see the
> >> > USB drive.  None of the other options boot the drive.
> >> > 
> >> > Selecting the experimental USB support doesn't seem to change
> >> > anything.
> >> 
> >> How is that? It should be accesible by SGD :-?
> >> 
> >> http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/USB_Boot
> >> 
> >> But I'm starting to think the problem may be on the Western Digital USB
> >> drive, as you said you were only facing problems with this concrete USB
> >> disk... Look, it seems there is one report on WD forums:
> >> 
> >> How to boot linux from My passport
> >> http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Passport-for-PC/How-to-boot-linux-from-
> 
> My-pa
> 
> >> ssport/td-p/74214
> >> 
> >> Greetings,
> > 
> > This is where I am now:
> (...)
> 
> > The USB Legacy option is enabled in the BIOS.
> > 
> > 
> > If grub is in the MBR for the USB drive shouldn't I be able to boot it?
> 
> Sure. There must be a problem somewhere...
> 
> > Do you understand what is going on here?
> 
> Okay, I've carefully read all of your tests, so let's recap:
> 
> - SGD (1.98x) cannot detect the USB drive (¿?)
> - SGD (0.99x) can detect the USB drive
> - GRUB is installed into the MBR of the USB disk
> - The Partition where GRUB is stored is marked as booteable
> 
> I still don't know what is preventing the "true" GRUB (the installed one)
> from booting but you can try to boot Debian directly with SDG (the
> version that detects the disk, that is, v. 0.99x) and see what happens.
> 
> Greetings,

I agree with your recap.

When I run SGD 0.9799, 
  I select Boot & Tools / 
              Boot Master Boot Record (MBR) / 
              Boot Master Boot Record (MBR)
    SGD lists two drives, (hd0), the laptop hard disk and (hd1) the USB drive.
    I select (hd1) and SGD displays: "Error 25: Disk Read Error"

When I try to list the USB partitions,
  I select Boot & Tools / 
              Show Partitions / 
              Show Partitions
    SGD lists two drives, (hd0), the laptop hard disk and (hd1) the USB drive.
    I select (hd1)
    SGD displays the header for the table of partitions, but no partitions.  

For a "direct boot":
    I select Gnu/Linux
                Boot Gnu/Linux
                Boot Gnu/Linux Directly
   SGD boots the laptop hard disk.


Peter