EricG1793
February 18th, 2012, 08:06 PM
I decided to try out Ubuntu for the first time. I didn't want to touch my existing Windows hard drive, so I got my external hard drive, shrunk its only partition, and added a new partition for Ubuntu. I told Ubunto to install "alongside" Windows, and it indicated that it would ask me which to boot, which sounded good to me.
I restarted after it installed, went into the boot menu, and told it to boot from the external hard drive. However, only the original FreeAgent partition showed up in the boot list; no sign of Ubuntu. If I try to boot from the FreeAgent partition, it instead goes to the Lenovo recovery partition in the internal hard drive, presumably because there is no OS in the FreeAgent partition.
I unplugged the external hard drive and tried to boot to the internal hard drive, and an error saying "no such device" came up. Then I plugged in the external hard drive and again told it to boot to the internal hard drive. This time, it gave me all the options for what to boot, and both Ubuntu and Windows run fine.
What I'm hoping to do is to disable Ubuntu taking over the internal hard drive and requiring the external hard drive to be connected to ask which OS. Right now I'm reliant on that external hard drive to boot Ubunto OR Windows. I'd rather just select the device from the boot menu.
So, what I ask of you guys is:
1. How to get Ubuntu to release control of the internal hard drive so it doesn't require the external one to be connected
2. How to get the BIOS to recognize the Linux partition in the hard drive and boot from that through the boot menu (I did choose to encrypt the user data in Ubuntu if that has has anything to do with it)
Thanks for any help you can give!
I restarted after it installed, went into the boot menu, and told it to boot from the external hard drive. However, only the original FreeAgent partition showed up in the boot list; no sign of Ubuntu. If I try to boot from the FreeAgent partition, it instead goes to the Lenovo recovery partition in the internal hard drive, presumably because there is no OS in the FreeAgent partition.
I unplugged the external hard drive and tried to boot to the internal hard drive, and an error saying "no such device" came up. Then I plugged in the external hard drive and again told it to boot to the internal hard drive. This time, it gave me all the options for what to boot, and both Ubuntu and Windows run fine.
What I'm hoping to do is to disable Ubuntu taking over the internal hard drive and requiring the external hard drive to be connected to ask which OS. Right now I'm reliant on that external hard drive to boot Ubunto OR Windows. I'd rather just select the device from the boot menu.
So, what I ask of you guys is:
1. How to get Ubuntu to release control of the internal hard drive so it doesn't require the external one to be connected
2. How to get the BIOS to recognize the Linux partition in the hard drive and boot from that through the boot menu (I did choose to encrypt the user data in Ubuntu if that has has anything to do with it)
Thanks for any help you can give!