Score:0

How to solve Grub rescue when installing to portable HDD

ar flag

I installed Ubuntu on a removable HDD. it boots up fine. I plug the HDD into another’s computer and grub failed big time and all I see is grub rescue. I plug it back into the original computer and it boots just fine. What is wrong with grub

error : grub rescue unable to write to disk (hd0,msdos1)

Nicolas Formichella avatar
cn flag
What Ubuntu is installed on that HDD?
cc flag
See bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1396379 and do add yourself to the "Does this affect me?" list on the bug.
Score:0
cn flag

Assuming it's and a 64bit OS

This is normal, EFI variables stored in the NVRAM are machine-unique and GRUB (and most importantly, in most cases, your UEFI) depends on them to locate boot entries

In order to change that, you need to boot your system and reinstall grub with the --removable option

If you use the option --removable then GRUB will be installed to esp/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI (or esp/EFI/BOOT/BOOTIA32.EFI for the i386-efi target) and you will have the additional ability of being able to boot from the drive in case EFI variables are reset or you move the drive to another computer. Usually you can do this by selecting the drive itself similar to how you would using BIOS. If dual booting with Windows, be aware Windows usually places an EFI executable there, but its only purpose is to recreate the UEFI boot entry for Windows.

ArchWiki's GRUB page

For the assumed conditions : will update

Score:0
eg flag

Nothing is wrong with Grub. But it has to do with references to UUID's, which are unique for each drive.
What I used to do when installing Ubuntu (or any other Linux distro) was unplug every drive in the system and only use the disk I want to install it on and the installation medium (USB-stick/DVD).

'How to Repair, Restore, or Reinstall Grub 2 with a Ubuntu Live CD or USB' may be usefull as well. See enter link description here for that.

Another thing you can try is described on this page enter link description here. It is in spanish though.

mangohost

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