Installed Ubuntu on my second SATA HD, at the beginning of the drive before an NTFS partition. Problem is when I hit F12 in the bootup sequence and select that disk, it just keeps bringing the menu back. Won’t boot.

It’s a GPT disk, I’ve booted from a USB and run boot-repair, created the appropriate partitions as prompted, it seemed to think it was ok – but nothing.

FFS.

Is it showing in your grub config? Guess so if you can select it at boot. Can you do a verbose boot to see if it’s trying to start?

Why are you having to hit F12? Basically you have not set it up properly. Use grub.

Or if you don’t have the technical confidence, just use Wubi.

As above, if both operating systems are on the same disk then you only need grub to run as a bootloader to choose which partition to boot.

F12 I’m guessing is your BIOS boot menu to choose which device to boot from and normally only lets you choose physical disks not logical disks.

First disk has Windows on it and is MBR, second has Linux and an NTFS partition which does not contain an OS. I have set the first disk to boot normally but I can press f12 to change the boot order on the fly. Not entirely clear what this does, but it is not a boot loader because it only lets you select devices, not partitions or OSes. If I but the second drive first in the boot order it still does not work. I do not get as far as grub.

I could in theory install grub on the first drive but that would overwrite the MBR which would erase PGP and cause a lot of trouble.

Sounds as though the boot section of the linux drive doesn’t like what you’re doing. If you remove the primary drive completely from the machine and then try and boot the Linux disc does it work?

I could in theory install grub on the first drive but that would overwrite the MBR which would erase PGP and cause a lot of trouble.

Been there, done that- wasn’t a whole heap of fun!

Cheers,
Jamie

Just checking, do both drives have their own MBR? And when you installed Ubuntu, what was the boot order, and was the Windows drive present and visible?

I am wondering if this is because you are using the BIOS to swap the boot order, so then the order which the BIOS reports the drives to Ubuntu might now be different from when they were installed.

For example, grub needs to know were to find it’s stuff, and if that’s now on a different drive ID as the drive order has been changed, then it might well not see anything and dump back to the boot menu.

Hmm, don’t think so. The second drive always comes up as /dev/sdb with the usb, and it doesn’t seem to even load grub at all.

Did you disconnect the Windows dive before installing? See some weirdness if another potential boot source is even present before now.

F12 should work OK if both disks are bootable without the other present.

If I change the bios boot order in the normal way then it still doens’t boot, so I doubt removing the main drive will do anything.

Run it in a VM ?

Maybe I’m missing something but I think

It’s a GPT disk

is your problem. GPT doesn’t support MBR, I think you need to setup an EFI boot partition (at least that’s how my Mac with a GPT drive is setup). Is the partition over 2TB? If not go back to MBR and it should work.

http://www.petri.co.il/gpt-vs-mbr-based-disks.htm

<edit>
Looks like you need an EFI BIOS or to do some jiggery pokery with Grub and an MBR boot partition.

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/booting.html
http://www.anchor.com.au/blog/2012/10/booting-large-gpt-disks-without-efi/
</edit>

If I change the bios boot order in the normal way then it still doens’t boot, so I doubt removing the main drive will do anything.

One less variable though, innit.

Booting a GPT disk from a BIOS system is hacky. Can I assume that you’re using “BIOS” as a shorthand and you actually mean UEFI? Lenovo?

Typically, EFI boot loaders are installed onto the first drive; by changing the boot order at a “BIOS” ie UEFI level, you’re bypassing the boot loader. What you need to do, I think, is either install Linux (or run a boot repair) with the other drive disconnected so that it configures the boot loader properly, or stop using UEFI to switch discs and do it in software with something like EasyBCD to chain-load GRUB.

I think.

Yes Lenovo, bios and uefi are both enabled in the setup screen.

I thought about completely swapping the drives – I may try it.

Ta.

You have backups of these partitions, yes?

It’s an interesting question actually, I might try it if I get an hour to spare. What OS versions are you using?

Ooh.

Did the Lenovo come with W8? Have you disabled “secure boot”?

The reason for doing it this way is because I don’t want to touch the existing Windows partitions til I’m sure I can use Linux for work. When I partitioned the second drive I left a gap at the beginning for this purpose.

Lenovo came with W7 but I dunno about secure boot, I’ll check.

Disk 1: 58GB NTFS W7 boot, 407GB NTFS
Disk 2: 5MB marked as grub_boot as per boot-repair instructions, 98GB ext4 (which W7 thinks is RAW incidentally), 8GB swap, 300GB NTFS

Disk 2 is a hot swappable drive in the hotbay or whatever they call it, so I think it’s considered eSata which might be something significant, might not.

You can also edit the windows boot manger that usually has a zero seconds timeout. I had a set up one where I didn’t want to upset the windows drive so added an entry to the windows boot loader and addeda 5 sec timeout to point to the other drive, which its self had grub installed and linux.

Boot went like this

bios -> windows boot loader ->windows
………………………| grub(on second drive) -> linux

I can’t remember the exact reason behind this but I did it and it worked fine.

Ah yes.. The windows boot loader. Forgot about that, cheers 🙂

Is there any reason to use Grub over the Windows boot loader?