Score:0

Unable to boot from other drives after ubuntu install

je flag

I have a PC with 3 drives. An 1 tb SSD for Windows a 1 Tb HDD for storage and I bought a new 240 gb SSD to install Ubuntu on for work purposes. To make sure I didn't delete any files from the other hard drives, I unplugged them and installed Ubuntu on the new SSD. Install went smoothly but now, after plugging in the old drives, I find that I cannot boot my 1 Tb Windows SSD anymore. I can see all the drives in Gparted and access files but when in the BIOS I cannot choose neither the 1 Tb SSD or the 1 Tb HDD to boot from which was possible previously.

Was installing Ubuntu with the other drives unplugged a bad idea ?

Thank you in advance, I am a bit lost.

I followed ChanganAuto insctructions and got the report : https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/4h5j32vHQ5/

David avatar
cn flag
Since the Windows drive was not there when you installed Ubuntu you never got the install beside option when you installed Ubuntu. There could be other issues as well but that comes to mind right away.
ChanganAuto avatar
us flag
Unless your computer is from ~2011 or older it has UEFI, not BIOS, so every OS should be installed in UEFI mode and in such mode you don't "boot drives", you boot entries in the ESP (EFI System Partition). So, yes, although removing the other drives is safer for error-prone users it has the inconvenient of not having access to the original ESP where the Ubuntu bootloader would have been installed. Use this option to (temporarily) install Boot Repair in the same live session media you used before - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair#A2nd_option_:_install_Boot-Repair_in_Ubuntu - (...)
ChanganAuto avatar
us flag
(...) Do NOT apply any "fix", just get the report then [edit] the question to post it (URL).
Alexandre Schifano avatar
je flag
I have the report here : https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/4h5j32vHQ5/ sda and sdb are my 1 Tb drives, Ubuntu is installed on sdc
ChanganAuto avatar
us flag
Not entirely unexpected, Ubuntu has been correctly installed in the proper UEFI mode but Windows was dumbly installed in Legacy/CSM/"BIOS" mode. Even if the drives were present you couldn't do a dual-boot using the Ubuntu's Grub.
Alexandre Schifano avatar
je flag
Ok so what would be the solution ? Should I try to reinstall Ubuntu but keeping the other drives connected and install beside Windows ?
oldfred avatar
cn flag
Correct/best is to reinstall Windows in UEFI boot mode to gpt partitioned drive. Note conversion from really old MBR to gpt will totally erase drive, so have good backups. Microsoft has required vendors to install Windows in UEFI mode since 2012. Easy fix is to add a bios_grub partition of 1MB to sdc & use Boot-Repair's advanced mode to reinstall grub in old BIOS boot mode.
I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

mangohost

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.