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I just welcomed a new Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 4 to my home. As it has a spare M.2 SSD slot, I intended to transplant the SSD running Ubuntu 20.04 straight outta an old Dell XPS 13 and (god willing!) continue where I left off. (Appreciate that may be brave or stupid, but I do enjoy learning from the fallout of such experiments!).

On first boot, following the transplant in slot nvme1 (secondary), the boot sequence halts with the message:

2102: Detection error on Storage Device1 (M.2)

Press Esc to continue

No grub menu. No choice of boot partitions in the lenovo boot menu.

For this error, the Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 4 Maintenance Guide suggests to reseat the SSD. However, Basic and Extended Diagnostic Tests both pass. After pressing escape, it can proceed with boot to pre-installed Windows 10 running on the primary SSD (slot nvme0). There, in Windows 10, the NTFS partitions on the secondary SSD are indeed recognized and read-writable as drive D: and E: respectively.

I want to boot Ubuntu from the secondary SSD.

Q: How can I do that?

Update:

So I ran Boot-Repair on the secondary SSD (sda). It did repair the boot partition (ESP?) for Ubuntu and Grub menu is the default.

Good news: the question is essentially answered. It can boot Ubuntu 20.04 (albeit without any wifi adapter detected).

Bad news: The Detection error on Storage Device1 (M.2) still remains and halts the boot. :( Seems those problems weren't related. Perhaps the UEFI firmware or BIOS has a bug in the SSD detection..?

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    If UEFI, you have to create a new UEFI boot entry to use the ESP on the other drive. You can reinstall grub or use efibootmgr. Was second drive UEFI? Did you turn Secure Boot off or was old install also UEFI Secure Boot? Please copy & paste the pastebin link to the Bootinfo summary report ( do not post report), do not run the auto fix till reviewed.Lets see details, use ppa version with your USB installer (2nd option) or any working install, not Boot-Repair ISO https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair – oldfred Mar 21 '22 at 13:21
  • Sorry been offline for a while. Thanks for the questions and suggestions, @oldfred! Before moving the drive, it booted Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with UEFI secure boot disabled. – user278849 Mar 26 '22 at 14:48
  • Bootinfo report https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/yjKjC4pNwY – user278849 Mar 26 '22 at 15:24
  • I do not think Boot-Repair works for installs with separate /var & /usr. It automounts /boot if found but not other system partitions. For most desktop installs / (root) & ESP, if UEFI is all that is required. Many suggest separate /home as an option. Your install in sda14 does not show mount of those partitions, so Boot-Repair may work, but use Advanced mode & choose both install & ESP on sda. And has mount of ESP, so UEFI install. You also have grub installed to MBR, but that will not work. Are you booting in UEFI mode? – oldfred Mar 26 '22 at 16:39
  • Thanks @oldfred! Will digest the comments and try the boot repair. Most recently I tried booting with secure boot disabled, bitlocker disabled and windows fast boot disabled as recommended in this guide https://tothepoles.co.uk/2020/05/22/install-notes-ubuntu-20-04-lts-on-lenovo-x1-extreme-gen-2/amp/

    Result was the same. Same 2102 error. Boot to Windows still possible.

    – user278849 Mar 27 '22 at 03:02
  • So I ran Boot-Repair on sda. It did repair the boot partition (ESP?) for Ubuntu and Grub menu is the default. Good news: the question is essentially answered. It can boot Ubuntu 20.04 (albeit without any wifi adapter detected). Bad news: the Detection error on Storage Device1 (M.2) still remains and halts the boot. :( Seems those problems weren't related. Perhaps the UEFI firmware or BIOS has a bug in the SSD detection..? – user278849 Mar 29 '22 at 08:44
  • These may have some more suggestions: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme 2019 UEFI settings required. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1291280/after-running-boot-repair-and-disabeling-secure-boot-still-not-booting-to-grub Lenovo X1 Carbon 6th Gen LITEON CA3 SSD issues https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2447687Lenov Have you updated UEFI and SSD firmware to latest available. Many resolve various issues with those updates. – oldfred Mar 29 '22 at 13:39

0 Answers0