[SOLVED] Boot from a separate external partition?

[lozontheweb]

I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.

To do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.

However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press enter" or something similar.

Where have I gone wrong with getting this to work?

Thanks in advance,
Laurence

[sgosnell]

Are you sure you selected the correct drive during the installation? The bootloader should go to the device, sdb or whichever, and not to a partition. I would try reinstalling, or you could specifically reinstall grub2. Google should turn up detailed instructions for doing that.

[lozontheweb]

Yup, I installed the bootloader to the drive itself (sdb) rather than the partition with the OS on (sdb 2 or something). Does it make a difference that Ubuntu is installed to a partition near the end of the drive?

Thanks for your help

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

We have to check partition structure of your Hard disk.
Boot up from Ubuntu LiveCD and execute this in Terminal

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

* It's small L in fdisk -l.

[sgosnell]

No, it shouldn't matter which partition Ubuntu is on. Grub should find it. You can try reinstalling grub, or do a complete reinstall. Something went wrong, and with a new install it's quicker to just redo it.

[Lostfarmer]

"No Operating System found, replace system disk and press enter"

Is an error being reported by the bios. Would suggest having a look in bios setup. On some comps not only must you select to boot USB but under usb setting there might be a selection 'enable legacy boot' or some wording, enable it.

A look at fdisk as devils casper requested could help if your partition setup is bad.

[lozontheweb]

Thanks a lot for your help but I have found out why there was a problem: my BIOS is able to boot from a USB flash drive but not a USB hard drive for some reason... I tried it on my newer laptop, and that coped fine.