Can't boot from external HDD

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Hi, new to linux and I want to give it a good try for a few weeks.

I have an external hdd that contains a hard drive I pulled out my laptop, it had a partition on it with all my films and tv shows but that's it. I allocated the rest of the drive to the ubuntu install. To do the install I just put the drive back in my laptop. When it's in the laptop it boots fine, but when I put it in the usb drive container there's no option in the boot menu to boot to it, nor will it boot to it if I change the boot order to usb first.

I installed both of the boot partitions on the second attempt thinking that was the problem but the same outcome.

What do I have to do to make this a bootable drive via usb? Shall I just reformat and fresh install then put all my film and tv shows back on?

Thanks for the help.

2

If there's no boot option, then your desktop may not support booting from USB drives, or may not have it enabled. I would try plugging the drive into different ports, as that can sometimes have an affect on boot, or power priorities.

3

Thanks for the help. It does support booting from usb, to install it to the hdd i booted from a usb. I've done a fresh install on the drive and put that in the enclosure and still it's not appearing on the boot menu so I'm a bit stumped.

4

I had a similar problem with my EliteBook but I don't believe that to be a Linux related issue.

My guess is that just like in my case your BIOS / UEFI is picky about what storage medium it wants to boot form.

I had a USB-Stick that was never recognised until I updated my BIOS. May this be an option for you?

What brand is your laptop?

5

It's a g500 but I have also tried it on my PC which is custom built and it does not work on there. Both will boot from a usb stick to install linux but not from the HDD with linux installed. Which makes me believe it's something to do with how I'm installing linux, but obviously i've no idea.

6

what program are you using ?

I use UnetBootin and I just "burn" the ISO to the usb.

1. get a cleared usb-stick maybe format it to fat32 i think it is.

2. install unetbootin,

3.while in unetbootin click diskimage locate the file and select

4.space reserved for files across reboots (ubuntu only): I cant remember but I think 2000mb should be fine, it was fine when I switched back to ubuntu from lxle.

EDIT:

derp! i need to read , I used a USB flashdrive I think that might be easier.

 

7

Is it possible that it's my drive enclosure? I'll put my windows SSD in it later and see if it will boot from that. Starting to suspect that it's that.

8

Hhmm, strange. I suppose by G500 you mean the lenovo one.

Are you in UEFI mode or legacy BIOS mode?

As far as I know the boot entries are stored in the hardware with UEFI instead of being stored on disk. So maybe your machine removes those entries when the disk has been disconnected?

9

That would also be my next guess.