External USB Drive non-boot

[Brian DeLacey]

It appears that the intermittent booting problems I was encountering with my
previous 2.5" external USB drive were due to an electrical power shortfall.
I bought a new 2.5" SimpleTech external USB drive and my Ubuntu booting
problems have all gone away.

This new 2.5" drive (SimpleTech Portable Drive, 5400 RPM, 160Gig) boots
quickly and cleanly into 8.04 - and it is still small and compact. The
SimpleTech comes with a double-dongle - an "all-in-one high speed USB 2.0 Y
cable". The second USB connector on this cable is there to just draw
additional power if needed. The drive also provides a connector for an
external power supply if needed. However, I haven't needed any of the extra
power options - this drive works fine for me with just one USB connection.
It makes a great portable Ubuntu.

SimpleTech clearly has figured out how to handle these power problems and
they've provided a good solution. It's nice they supply the Y cable in case
more power is needed. Their larger capacity pocket-sized drives also have
the same power/connection features.

Brian


On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Brian DeLacey <bdelacey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to boot Ubuntu (7.10 / 8.04) from an external USB hard drive,
> but it's not able to find the hard drive.
>
> One external USB hard drive I have boots Ubuntu fine (Samsung, 7200 rpm).
> However, another external USB drive (Western Digital 5400 rpm, 320 GB My
> Passport pocket drive) can't find the external USB drive and will not boot.
>
> One odd anomaly: if I go into the system's BIOS, to alter a setting and
> save it (e.g. related to detecting the USB hard drive) the Western Digital
> will boot on the next system restart, however, it will NOT boot for
> subsequent restarts. (It seems like the process of saving the BIOS "detects"
> the external USB drive, but "forgets" it later.)
>
> Any ideas why this Western Digital won't consistently boot? I've
> reinstalled Ubuntu and GRUB. Are there any recommended tools for inspecting
> / fixing the master boot loader?
>
> Thanks for any suggestions,
>  Brian
>
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