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I have a Dell inspiron n5050 with a damaged internal hard drive and I'm trying to load ubuntu 20.04 from an external 4T HDD as my main drive.

I've created a live usb from my other machine, boot from it on my damaged machine and installed ubuntu 20.04 on the external drive, then restarted , but all I get is a black screen with a blinking cursor (_).

What I've tried:

  • boot from the usb, install & run boot-repair, but it's not working
  • on the black screen, hold shift or ctrl+alt+fx, but it does nothing
  • followed this article, until choose ‘Use as EFI system partition’, I don't find this option, I'm not sure but I think I don't have a EFI system (I'm still noob on this)

I don't understand why it does not boot from the hard drive, while the live usb boots just fine

Edit

I did follow the steps from here, but it did not work.

I tried to boot from the external drive on a VM on a macbook, and it did work, but on my Dell it's always a black screen.

Maybe it's something to do with usb 3 (HDD) vs usb 2 (DELL), as mentioned here

Enabling the xHCI option in the BIOS fixes the hanging boot issue

but I don't find this option

Mohamed Ramrami
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  • It looks like that is second gen Intel chip which will be UEFI. With gpt drive you must have an ESP for UEFI boot or a bios_grub for BIOS boot. And since huge drive, those partitions must be nearer the start/front of drive, probably within the first 2TB. UEFI suggests ESP be first, but Windows often has it second or third, but smaller partitions before it. ESP should be 300 to 500MB with esp/boot flags. The bios_grub is 1MB unformatted with bios_grub flag. You can have both, but only one or other requried, depending on version of grub UEFI or BIOS. – oldfred Feb 06 '21 at 15:30
  • I did that by following the steps in https://askubuntu.com/a/1217839/643885, but it did not work – Mohamed Ramrami Feb 06 '21 at 17:54
  • If getting black screen, that is most often a video driver issue? Do you have nVidia? If booting in UEFI mode, press escape right after Dell logo, but before grub menu normally appears. May have to try several times to get it right. Or if booting in BIOS mode, hold shift key from Dell logo until grub menu appears. Then try to boot recovery mode, second line in grub menu. – oldfred Feb 06 '21 at 19:44
  • No nvidia, just the default Intel HD Graphics 3000 – Mohamed Ramrami Feb 06 '21 at 19:57
  • When I hold the shift key as you said, the black screen appears again but this time with the word GRUB plus a blinking cursor, but I can't do anything – Mohamed Ramrami Feb 06 '21 at 20:03
  • Is it grub> ? Which is the grub terminal with limited set of terminal commands to aid booting. https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/GRUB-only-offers-a-rescue-shell.html Does ls command show partitions, and then can you find ls (X,Y)/boot where X is drive & Y partition. You may have to search till you find /boot which is then you installed partition. – oldfred Feb 06 '21 at 21:12
  • No it's GRUB _ , and I can't type anything – Mohamed Ramrami Feb 07 '21 at 05:17
  • Lets see details, use ppa version with your live installer (2nd option) or any working install, not Boot-Repair ISO: Please copy & paste the pastebin link to the Boot-info summary report ( do not post report), do not run the auto fix till reviewed. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair – oldfred Feb 07 '21 at 14:38

1 Answers1

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Installing to External Drive

If you are installing Ubuntu on External Drive it is nice to create a disk that will boot on either BIOS or UEFI machines,

The method on this Link: Easy Full Install USB that Boots both BIOS and UEFI is very simple to install, Just download the image file and use your other computer to flash it to the external disk using Rufus or Etcher in Windows or dd, Disks or mkusb in Ubuntu.

A more complex method, starting from scratch, can be found here: How to Create a Full Install of Ubuntu 20.04 to USB Device Step by Step

C.S.Cameron
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  • Thanks. I did follow the steps from the second link, but it did not work. I tried to boot from the external drive on a VM on a macbook, and it did work, but on my Dell it's always a black screen. Maybe it's something to do with usb 3 (HDD) vs usb 2, I updated my question. – Mohamed Ramrami Feb 06 '21 at 17:59
  • The method in the first link also did not work for me :( – Mohamed Ramrami Feb 06 '21 at 20:17