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My intention is to create a bootable USB drive (Corsair Voyager GT 3.0 with 64 GB) with Ubuntu Desktop 20.10 using only GPT-style drives (Disk 0 "Windows" and Disk 1 "USB"). After several attempts I have created Ubuntu 20.10 and run it to download all the missing updates.

Installation type is "Something else". The partitions on the /dev/sdb USB are:

  • 250 MB "EFI System Partition"
  • 16 GB "swap area"
  • 24 GB "Ext4 journaling file system" with Mount point "/"
  • rest is "FAT32 file system" with Mount point: "/mydata"
  • Device for boot loader installation: /dev/sdb Corsair Voyager GT 3.0 (64.0 GB)

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It then confirms:

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And as mentioned it is bootable from the ASUS N551VW laptop (from 2016). EasyUEFI shows that the "ubuntu" boot option is using the EFI partition on the Windows drive (/dev/sda).

The boot entry that points to the EFI partition on the USB drive (/dev/sdb), "UEFI: Corsair Voyager GT 3.0 1.00, Partition 1" boots nothing at all.

Furthermore, the folders in the FAT32 EFI partition on Disk 0 (Windows) are:

  • Microsoft
  • Boot
  • ubuntu

The key Question:

Why doesn't the Boot Loader get installed on /dev/sdb as instructed?

Could it be that the latest BIOS in the laptop is too old? ("fast startup" is disabled in Windows 10; "Fast Boot", "Launch CSM" and "secure boot" are disabled in the BIOS; "Legacy USB Support" is also disabled (to keep USB devices only for EFI applications).

Or is it possibly a bug in the Ubuntu Desktop 20.10 installation process?

UPDATE #2 - 6 Mar 2021 - ERROR INFORMATION

The following may be able to help someone diagnose and fix the problem...

Here I caught the full error message text (after yet another full reinstall). The boot process hangs once with this error message - thereafter it somehow manages to boot Ubuntu:

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I am still following the same procedure as above - with disk 0 (Windows) still in my laptop. There are no known hardware problems with my equipment!

Aendie
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    Use Boot-Repair's advanced mode to reinstall grub to sdb drive. Old but still valid bug. Posted work around to manually unmount & mount correct ESP during install #23 & #26 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1396379 Others suggest disconnecting all other drives physically or logically in UEFI settings, so install drive is first drive. Or removing boot flag/esp flag from first drive, so only ESP is install drive. (I have not had that work, but others have.) Or if you have ESP on second or external drive, you can just reinstall grub, either manually or with Boot-Repair. – oldfred Mar 05 '21 at 20:11
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    When installing Ubuntu to USB on a computer that boots Windows in UEFI mode it is best to remove the Windows disk first, otherwise the new install will use the Windows ESP partition and not have one of it's own. The method that I use for a Full install to USB creates both BIOS and ESP boot partitions from scratch, see: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1217832/how-to-create-a-full-install-of-ubuntu-20-04-to-usb-device-step-by-step – C.S.Cameron Mar 06 '21 at 04:18
  • Excellent feedback from both of you - this is greatly appreciated (as I was going half crazy here). I will edit my question above as further information becomes available. On my PC I did exactly that: removed my Windows NVMe drive before installing Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 LTS. – Aendie Mar 06 '21 at 15:38

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