Possible Inspiron 1501 BIOS Boot call incompatible with Linux Grub boot install?

Question

Hello. I have an issue I hope someone can assist me with: I recently purchased an Inspiron 1501 laptop. I wanted to maintain the integrity of the internal disk and the Vista Home Premium OS, and purchased a Elements by Western Digital 250GB external USB 2.0 Hard disk drive. When I attached the drive, the BIOS recognizes it in the Boot menu as a boot item. I loaded the Kubuntu Linux CD and installed the Linux OS to the external disk drive, specifying GRUB to install to hd1 and when GRUB ran it was installing (known by flashing activity light) on the USB drive. Once I rebooted, I went into the BIOS again and changed the boot order so that the USB external drive was before the internal drive. Then, I saved my settings and rebooted. Once I had gotten past the BIOS splash screen, the screen clears and a text cursor appears in the upper left hand corner. After several seconds, the phrase 'Operating System not found' appears and the boot process stops. I have tried various installs of Linux that use the GRUB loader to no success. I have also tried updating the BIOS to the latest (2.3.0), and this had no noticable effect other than changing the categorization of the USB external drive from 'HDD Device' to 'USB Storage Device'. My question for Dell and the forum: Can anyone at Dell confirm or deny if there is a known boot call issue between the BIOS of the Inspiron 1501 (and possibly other Phoenix-based BIOS computers) and the manner in which GRUB bootloader installs itself, or if there is a known BIOS boot call and the Elements by WD USB 2.0 External hard drive series? I would like to be able to use this USB external drive on demand via boot order in the BIOS so that I do not trouble with swapping internal hard drives whenever I want to use a different OS on my laptop. Thank you very much in advance. jcknouse

DELL-Jimmy P · Answer

jcknouse    Create a bootable CD with fdisk on it. Remove the main hard drive from the portable, boot to the cd and then use FDISK to set the partition on the USB hard drive to active. Turn the system off, put the hard drive back in and then see if it will boot to the USB drive.

DELL-Jimmy P · Answer

jcknouse    You will probably have to download it, try bootdisk.com.

jcknouse · Answer

Jimmy P.,   Thanks for your reply.   I scanned the Windows Vista Home Premium directory for 'fdisk.exe' and it was not found.   Question 1)  Are you speaking of the Linux fdisk utility?  Or, Windows?   Question 2)  If it is Windows that you speak of, which CD that came with my laptop would contain the fdisk utility of which you speak?   Thanks much for your reply.  Sorry I couldn't reply more quickly.  I had family came into town Tuesday and Wednesday.   jcknouse

jcknouse · Answer

JimmyP,

My apologies for taking so long to respond.

I tried your suggestion, and it didn't work.

I seem to have found out what the issue is out of blind luck.

I have a new Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, on which I attached the Elements powered by WD 250GB USB external hard disk.

I then successfully installed a Linux distribution to the USB drive, but for some reason the laptop would not successfully boot from the drive if I leave the drive powered on.

If I:

1) power down the laptop
2) power down the drive
3) wait a few seconds
4) power on the USB drive then immediately power on the laptop and let it boot

The USB drive boots successfully and lets me choose my Linux installation (USB drive) or Windows Vista (internal SATA drive) from the GRUB boot load menu.

Is there a known issue with the initialization process of USB drives and certain BIOSes causing the drive not to properly call the designated boot data when the BIOS sends boot signals?

If so, is there an existing/in-the-works BIOS update to remedy this signalling issue?

Is one of the settings in the 2.3.0 version of the BIOS causing this problem?

I have asked Elements/Western Digital to research the same issue.

Thank you.

jcknouse · Answer

An update:

Evidently, it has nothing to do with Dell's BIOS.

The "Elements Powered by WD" external 3.5" USB hard drives which use an external power source have the issue. Evidently, it cues more on the AC adaptor power than the power signalling from the USB. Hence when you re-boot the laptop, it doesn't see a re-boot as a time to reset its boot ROM and does not re-initialise properly along with the laptop.

I purchased an Aluratek 120GB 2.5" USB drive which is totally dependent on the USB port(s) for power. It works perfect. 3 Linux distros running from it, so that I don't botch my Vista on the internal drive

Jimmy...if you're still reading this...I would recommend to you that you note that I think that Dell should address this issue with WD about their external USB drive products under the "Elements" brand...since Western Digital does provide some of your disks for your machines and you don't want customers thinking Dell is putting sub-standard drives in their machines that WD uses in their USB products..

Thanks for your help.

John

Message Edited by jcknouse on 05-22-2007 03:24 PM

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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