Grub error using a USB external disk

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

antonio montagnani wrote:
> 
> But what is funny (let us say funny, as I had all my data backed-up),
> I didn't change nothing on my system, I didn' install grub, and I was
> still booting off my CD: I suspect that something happened to the disk
> when it was attached to a Windows system and the USB system of Windows
> detected it, may not clearly dismounted by M$???
> 
> Any idea how to recover the situation?? shall we change the title of thread???
> 
Let me make sure I understand what is going on. You are getting the
Grub error when you use the boot CD that was working before, right?

Have you booted to the USB drive from the CD on this system before?

If you boot from the install CD, and use the rescue mode, can it
read the /boot partition? How about the LVM volumes in the LVM
partition? You may have to use something like "rescue expert" or
"expert rescue" before it will see the USB drive. (I don't remember
if the normal rescue mode loads the USB drivers.)

What does grub.conf look like on the CD? Are you loading hte kernel
and initrd from the CD, or the USB drive? If you are loading from
the CD, then the error would be on the CD, and not the USB drive.
Grub would not be trying to mount anything on the USB drive. I am
not even sure the USB drive would get a BIOS number if you are not
booting from it. That would be BIOS dependent. (Are there any
standards covering this?)

I would not expect Windows to be able read anything on the USB drive
except the partition table unless you installed the e2fs drivers for
Windows. Now, if you let Windows do anything to the USB drive, then
you will have problems. If I remember right, you have Vista on this
laptop. It is possible that Vista does something to a USB drive that
 XP does not do. I don't have any experience with this.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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