Hello everyone :).
Trying to keep it short, cause after 2 days of troubleshooting I’m a bit tired and really confused on what happened here… Maybe it’s my lack of understanding about Legacy BIOS/UEFI/EFI/Bootloader/GRUB… But that was really an odd “issue” that resolved by itself?
Intro
My 15 years old laptop, an Asus N76V, is still going strong, though It’s purpose is not the same as a few years back. It’s working great as a mini-server to host docker containers, DNS server, firewall, wireguard tunnel…
Space left on my volume group (LVM) was getting tight so I decided to install a new Samsung 1TB SSD into it’s second slot. As easy as it is, I though this would not take more than 30 minutes…
Old SSD just vanished from boot option in bios.
After booting into BIOS to see if the new SSD is recognized, everything seems okay, however my primary SSD containing the Bootloader and system just vanished as boot option?? I was not to angry about it because if something strange had happened and everything got wiped for whatever reason, I still have my daily backups, so the troubleshooting begins…
Things I have tried to bring my primary SSD back as boot option in BIOS
Though my secondary and new SSD shows as boot option, it’s empty and has no Bootloader or system installed.
- Change a lot of things in the BIOS
From AHCI to password protection and disable anti-theft, secure boot… I think I changed every option possible (related to SSD) in the BIOS and reverted back to default without my primary SSD showing again as boot option.
- Clear CMOS
Opening the case and taking out the little battery to clear the CMOS had not effect at all either.
- boot into Debian rescue mode, boot-repair, chroot session
From a Live session USB tried a few things in rescue mode and even in the Live session used the boot-repair tool and tried to manually fix the EFI/Bootloader in a chrooted environment, because Yes even if I couldn’t boot into my system my data was still there an safe !!
- Disconnect new SSD, swap bay position.
Even when I removed the new SSD from it’s SATA connection or swaped SATA bay connections, the primary SSD didn’t showed back into the BIOS…
Guess I have to reinstall Debian on my new SSD?
So I gave up on trying to fix the Bootloader and primary SSD and just went for a fresh Debian install on my new SSD.
Nothing uncommon during the installation process except that during the partition all my volume groups and logical volumes from my primary SSD are visible, so I left them alone and created a new VG and LVs. I do as usual a LVM manual partioning with EXT4 filesystem with separate /boot partition, however I forgot to set the ESP partition (was getting a bit late and got a bit on my nerves…). Installation went without issues.
And then It came back…
So booting into my BIOS to see if my new SSD boot position is okay… Ohhhhh and what a surprise to see my primary SSD back as boot choice… however my new SSD isn’t there anymore (expected as I forgot to set an ESP partition… And Bootloader is from my primary SSD).
Booting into my system I’m greeted by the Bootloader? GRUB? With 2 choices
- My old linux OS
- My new linux OS
Some kind of relief and happy moment after 2 days…
Kinda curious what happens If set the /boot/EFI partition on secondary SSD
I got kinda confused on what happened here so to further confuse myself I reformatted and reinstalled Debian on the secondary disk with the correct /boot/EFI partition.
And I got even more confused… The boot priority in BIOS only shows the secondary SSD as boot option…!?
Questions
What happend here?
-
Why did my primary SSD (which had a proper Bootloader and clean system) disappeared as boot option in the BIOS as soon as I installed a new blank SSD and didn’t came back even when the new one was unplugged from SATA?
-
Why does my BIOS only shows 1 disk as possible boot device when both have proper Bootloader and system?
-
Does 1 external Bootloader suffice to make both system work?!
Not sure about the last question… so maybe I’m looking more or less to sharpen my understanding of a Bootloader/EFI/UEFI/GRUB… And any hint to a good resource, book, eBook to get a better understanding is really appreciated :)
I know those are a lot of words (and I said I will keep it short…) but I think the context is important here, and I’m not able to express correctly my issue/thoughts without it.
Thanks in advance for those who beared with me and read the whole text and can hint me to the correct direction to a better understanding on what happened.
Every BIOS is a bit different.
Some have option to boot using Old style partition scheme. Make sure it is on.
You can always boot any Linux distro you are most familiar with from USB and copy boot partition from old to new disc.
It is not that hard if you are familiar with command line level partition tools.
Arch Linux installer is great for that purpose simply because it is the main installation mode.
You can jump to command line tooling from Fedora installer easily as well.
That’s all the distro experience I have.
It is “the way” when you have more complicated disk setups like encryption, raid, mapper, etc.
The issue you have is most likely a BIOS artifact. New drive makes bios think you have EFI based system vs old drive was BIOS.
You are not likely to get accurate help here.
You don’t need to make drastic moves destroying data, but playing with BIOS settings may help.
You may need to identify your system capabilities, to troubleshoot effectively. Here is one way to do that:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide#Verify_the_boot_mode
I am not saying to install Arch. Just a way to identify your system.
One easiest way to get your old disc back is to wipe out formatting data on new disk. Be warned that running wipefs on wrong drive will loose all of your old disk data in less than one second. So, identify your disc with absolute certainty using lsblk, you may need options to lsblk.
No idea why old SSD disappeared from boot menu but you cannot use EFI partition on a legacy BIOS system simply because it doesn’t recognize it. Also for legacy systems MBR is recommended instead of GPT. Don’t use ESP either.