Not detecting Bootable external drive (USB or SD Card or HDD) in Boot Menu or in BIOS-Boot option

Hi,

Starting this a separate thread on suggestion from @aphanic and @billsey. Here is problem statement -
Model number : Aspire A315-51-39GU
OS pre-installed : Window 10 64bit
HDD : 1TB Seagate

Few days back suddenly my laptop has started showing HDD error (No Bootable device found) intermittently. I had no idea why is this suddenly coming and I started looking into internet and even contacted Acer support and found that this is very generic issue with all Acer laptop range and can be fixed by following some steps in Bios. I was still puzzled why this is suddenly showing up after 2 years of Laptop purchase having said this I have kept the laptop in immaculate condition and it still looks very new as it was used very rarely (I use work laptop for most of my things).
But the pain started from here, the steps I followed (https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/572887/no-bootable-device-aspire-3-a315-51) did not worked and I tried multiple other things with no joy and problem only became worse as I started to get the error more often and not just on boot but also while running laptop it started to crash with "Fatal HDD Error". At this point started to think it is perhaps HDD issue and started to look at option to take my OS out of system HDD, however whenever I did the health check using the Acer care center application, it has always returned the HDD status as Good and even the read/write speed of HDD is pretty nice.
I created a bootable pendrive using Rufus with OS Ubuntu 20.4 and installed the OS on a spare SD Card which I had to run the Ubuntu.
I installed the OS successfully on SD Card and was even able to use the live OS until new OS asked to restart post successful OS installation. From here I followed below steps,
- restart laptop
- press F2 to enter Bios to select the boot option

but to my surprise I couldn't see any other bootable drive than the system HDD (Windows 10). Then I tried enabling the Boot Menu (F12)and checked if I can get any option there but still no Joy.
I played with BIOS option secure boot enabled/disabled, superviser password on/off, SATA as AHCI and other and etc. etc. nothing worked. Finally I got my external HDD and installed Ubuntu 20.04 on additional drive on HDD thing if it is SD card which is culprit but again I was disappointed and BIOS or Boot Option ain't showing the HDD either.

At this stage I have run out of options and just came across some more threads which suggested that Acer is on purpose blocking other OS use through BIOS firmware.

So I am with two issues here though both are related -
1) No Bootable Device though my HDD health status is good
2) Not able to detect external bootable drive (USB, SD Card or HDD) please bear in mind I am able to install OS the problem is coming while booting new OS

PS: I have even updated BIOS Firmware to latest 1.14 and retried all above things still no joy.

Any help is much appreciated @aphanic @bi@billsey

TA

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aphanic

SazzAspire3 said:

[...] found that this is very generic issue with all Acer laptop range and can be fixed by following some steps in Bios [...]

That's... an odd thing to recommend, it wouldn't be my first thought after reading about your problem. Just like you said, all of a sudden after 2 years of it working it doesn't seem likely that the fix has anything to do with changing anything in the firmware settings.

SazzAspire3 said:

[...] At this stage I have run out of options and just came across some more threads which suggested that Acer is on purpose blocking other OS use through BIOS firmware. [...]

I'm not an expert on Acer systems by any metric, but I find it's just like with any other brand (excluding Apple that is). Newer computers for example can't switch to legacy, so whatever you want to boot has to support the current standard, UEFI.

Its Secure Boot option being optional makes it easy to boot anything that's unsigned (like custom kernels for example), but I've noticed that Acer requires a supervisor password to be set in order to modify the Secure Boot setting. Not a big deal after all.

The main problem with newer models is the SATA operation mode for Intel hardware, but that has more to do with Intel than with the manufacturers. Its RST mode of operation for the storage controllers complicates things in Linux. Per the official documentation when RST is selected it behaves as a software RAID of some sort, and yet in my system for example (10th gen, Comet Lake based) mdadm is unable to see anything connected to the controller ports. It is detected, it perfectly recognizes the Intel RAID controller but states that nothing is in there. Makes me wonder what's going on, but because I can easily switch the SATA operation mode to AHCI, the previous standard in the firmware settings I can access the internal M.2 drive from Linux easily.

They (Acer) did hide the SATA operation mode under a key combination for some models, in the A515-54G that I have the change happened after the 1.11 revision of the firmware; to see it you have to press Ctrl+S in the Main tab. So all in all things continue to be amicable for running OSes other than Windows (and Ubuntu for example has its booting structure signed, so there's no need to disable Secure Boot even).

Anyway, now that we're on topic, before addressing Linux I'd like to talk a bit about the problem you were having, not being able to boot into Windows. Assuming you're running under UEFI, you'd need to have an special partition in a GPT based disk.

It's called an EFI/ESP partition, formatted as FAT32, I think Windows sets it to be 100 MB in size, but you can have it larger if you want. Some Linux distros recommend 350 MB for example. The thing is that unlike any other FAT32 partition this one has to have some flags set, in parted/GParted terms it's the esp flag (which sets another on its own), but since we're talking Windows for now I'm going to be addressing it using its native partitioning tools.

That's is where the boot code resides, if a disk is GPT partitioned but lacks that partition or it is corrupted it won't appear in an UEFI boot menu. We'll come back to this partition when we talk about Ubuntu, but for now, know that it can be deleted and re-created from a Windows installation USB for example without major problems.

These would be the steps, assuming you have booted a Windows live environment of some kind (either WinPE, WinRE, or installation media):

Access a command prompt, if it's installation media you have booted from press Shift+F10 and one will appear.
Then get into the DiskPart program to handle partitions, in the screenshots below whatever is highlighted in yellow is the input you need to type.
List the disks and select the one that you're unable to boot from, in my case it's disk 0, then show its partitions:
That will show you the partition structure of the disk, what you see in the picture above is the typical setup for a current Windows version. There's the EFI partition first (#1), one very little reserved for whatever Microsoft needs it to (#2), the main one (#3), and a 4th one which is where the recovery environment resides.

Acer machines may have other partitioning schemes, same as with other manufacturers, what that picture shows is the default for a clean Windows installation anyway.

We're interested in the first one, the EFI partition, it's generally protected you'll see that I'll try to delete it now and it'll tell me niet, unless I know what I'm doing and I use the "override" switch. We're going to mount it instead, assigning it a letter to gain access to it. By the way, the "det" command inside of DiskPart is able to show you details of what you ask it for. For example, "det disk" or "det part" once you have it selected:

So now the EFI partition is accesible through the letter e in this case, but because of the kind of partition it is you won't be able to see it as a non admin, that rules out the typical File Explorer access, but not from an admin command prompt which is what we need anyway to re-create the boot files. These would be its usual contents for a Windows only installation:

E:\
└───EFI
    ├───Microsoft
    │   ├───Boot
    │   │   │   BCD
    │   │   │   boot.stl
    │   │   │   bootmgfw.efi
    │   │   │   bootmgr.efi
    │   │   │   kdnet_uart16550.dll
    │   │   │   kdstub.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_10df.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_10ec.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_1137.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_14e4.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_15b3.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_1969.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_19a2.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_1af4.dll
    │   │   │   kd_02_8086.dll
    │   │   │   kd_07_1415.dll
    │   │   │   kd_0C_8086.dll
    │   │   │   memtest.efi
    │   │   │   winsipolicy.p7b
    │   │   │

    ... Internationalization stuff ...

    │   │   ├───Fonts
    │   │   │       chs_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       cht_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       jpn_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       kor_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       malgunn_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       malgun_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       meiryon_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       meiryo_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       msjhn_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       msjh_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       msyhn_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       msyh_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       segmono_boot.ttf
    │   │   │       segoen_slboot.ttf
    │   │   │       segoe_slboot.ttf
    │   │   │       wgl4_boot.ttf
    │   │   │
    │   │   └───Resources
    │   │       │   bootres.dll
    │   │       │
    │   │       └───en-US
    │   │               bootres.dll.mui
    │   │
    │   └───Recovery
    │           BCD
    │
    └───Boot
            bootx64.efi

So, the interesting part after all, recreating that whole structure, it can be done with a single command (outside of DiskPart already, but still in an admin prompt. I'm not going to run it right now but it has this structure where 'X' is the letter assigned to the main partition where Windows is installed and 'E' is the letter assigned to the EFI partition:
```
X:\Windows\System32\bcdboot.exe X:\Windows /f UEFI /s E:
```
There's another switch, /v if you wanted to see it being more verbose but it's not necessary. The ones I used /f is to specify that the boot files to be created are to be for an UEFI system, and /s is to specify the location where the files are to be created, the EFI partition itself.
After that, we'll need to go into DiskPart one more time to remove access to the EFI partition, just for good measure:
And that's it, as long as the Windows installation is in a healthy state you should have no trouble booting into it. It will appear in the boot manager as expected.

One thing that has me intrigued is what caused those files to be missing, or corrupted in the first place. It's a hidden partition, not mounted by default and inaccessible unless you go through several steps. I do not know what Acer Care does to check the health of the disk, or whether it's able to detect faults in the connection layers, but we could try looking at the disk health ourselves.

Several programs to read SMART data, one that works on both Windows and Linux (I'm attaching a Windows build to this post just in case) is GSmartControl. In the attributes section you can see if there are any sectors that have been relocated, or if there were uncorrectable errors during transmissions, and the statistics tab complements that information.

You can also run disk self-tests from it:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/1e/bnyaombqdg5k.png

Now, Ubuntu... finicky stuff we have here. Its installer is tricky to get working when the SATA operation mode is set to RST. I found that it will not install into an external disk unless it is able to access the EFI partition of the internal disk when run under UEFI.

It seems to be a requirement because instead of creating an EFI partition in the external media, and put there its boot code and loader (GRUB or whatever you choose) it modifies the one in the internal disk. So in effect you'll have an installation that can only be booted in that machine, because when that drive is plugged in some other there'd be no bootloader installed on it.

Assuming that EFI partition of the internal disk is actually accesible, if the problem in your case stems in the connection between the disk and the machine itself you're out of luck. Maybe that's why you couldn't boot Ubuntu any way other than the live way.

Other Linux distributions do things differently, and it's certainly no requirement to have a disk structured with GPT to be bootable under UEFI, it's perfectly possible to use the traditional MBR partition table with a FAT32 active (boot flag enabled) partition and the boot code placed in there. Even for Windows! And that's usually the one that complains the most about how it likes to be run.

I'm afraid at the moment I wouldn't know how to guide you to have Ubuntu installed in an external drive that works in other systems. I'm an Arch guy and because installation there is manual it's easy to first create the partition structure, set the mountpoints and install the OS, but on Ubuntu because ubiquity automates things last time I checked I had to delve into its code to get it work and I desisted.

There is however a way, that should work with Ubuntu too, but since I haven't tried it myself I can't say it for sure. You'd install Ubuntu on a virtual machine, any kind, it doesn't really matter the virtualization software you use, but it does need to be an UEFI virtual machine. Once installed, ubiquity would have created the necessary partitions in the virtual disk for it to be bootable.

The next step would be to connect the external drive or SD card to the virtual machine and clone the internal disk, using Clonezilla for example, to the external one. One could even then expand the filesystems so it makes use of all of the disk space, but because there'd be a proper ESP partition there, if I were to hazard a guess I'd say that external disk or SD card would show up in any UEFI boot menu.

I hope it helps somehow and doesn't add to the craziness you have already experienced, in any case I'll be following this thread, I'm curious to know what happened to that disk.

billsey

Great write-up @aphanic! It looks like you have covered pretty much all the bases. As you suggest a lot of the Linux options can work fine in a dual boot environment, but by default most will install GRUB as the default boot environment and often with 00 seconds to choose a different option, and then it's a hassle to get Windows working again. Best is to do the Linux install without grub and then use a UEFI editor to add the boot point to the existing UEFI. That's not as easy to explain though, so it's best to find a distribution that is more friendly.

aphanic

I was writing as I was thinking and, as usual, didn't give it a second reading, I would have changed some things and fixed some typos now haha 😅

There is at least one more thing we didn't cover though, if the Windows installation was done with the SATA operation mode set to RST switching to AHCI (and vice versa) requires further steps to make Windows boot. Reinstalling is not necessary but a trip to Safe Mode is, so keep that in mind @SazzAspire3 if you play with that option.

I remember years ago when it was the other way around @billsey, when a Windows update would override the MBR of the disk to reinstall its own and get rid of GRUB or Syslinux if they were installed in dual boot scenarios. It would bother me so much at one point with several machines that I just resorted to go the other way around, instead of using a Linux bootloader to chainload into Windows I'd use the Windows BCD to chainload into Linux. No more headaches after updates

But now (well, since Windows 8 I think) there's some prefetching before the boot menu is shown in Windows unless the boot policy is set to legacy, so going that route (if it's even possible, I haven't tried) is a waste if one usually runs Linux, because the machine is actually rebooted after the non-default option is chosen. As if Windows expects to be chosen, but when you choose something else it goes "okay, okay, I'll just discard all I have preloaded and reboot into what you want", even if it is a different Windows installation in another partition.

Aaaaaand I also forgot to attach to that post the Windows build of GSmartControl, tsk tsk... I'm getting forgetful of late. It's pretty much the official one with an updated database for drives, just in case.

GSmartControl.zip

SazzAspire3

Thanks you both @aphanic and @billsey. I will go through all the troubleshoot suggest above but just double to re-iterate : My windows is on HDD which is fitted in laptop slot while I am trying to install Ubuntu or Linux on external (portable) drive this is to mitigate the issue where my laptop is showing "No Bootable Device" error and in such case I can switch to portal drive OS and continue some stuffs of mine.
Do you concur with this idea?

SazzAspire3

Hi @aphanic

My luck with my laptop seems to have deserted me. I was so excited to try all the things and details you have put out in your answer but darn machine just didn't boot again and persistently showing "No bootable Device" error.
So I decided to install Ubuntu one more time and this time by unplugging the HDD altogether from the the slot. Beairing your this comment in mind.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It seems to be a requirement because instead of creating an EFI partition in the external media, and put there its boot code and loader (GRUB or whatever you choose) it modifies the one in the internal disk. So in effect you'll have an installation that can only be booted in that machine, because when that drive is plugged in some other there'd be no bootloader installed on it."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had my bootable Ubuntu USB still with me and I got my hands on another one where I installed the Ubuntu with fingers crossed that this time at least the bios will detect the drive for booting. But things were still against me and my desperate attempt ended with no joy.

Now I am left with one laptop with non working HDD, one bootable USB with Ubuntu image on it and another USB and SD card with Ubuntu installed but laptop denies to detect OS on any disk. (Ubuntu image is still working to run live OS or install Ubuntu)
@billsey

Thanks for your help this far.

SazzAspire3

Hi @aphanic

Finally managed to install Linux Mint on USB stick as portable OS. Steps I followed were pretty much same as for Ubuntu.
- Unplugged HDD form socket
- Sticked in bootable Linux Mint USB
- Installed Linux Mint on another USB (Special thing is Linux managed all formatting and partitioning by itself and I didn't had to do any forced ESP or EXT4 partition while installation)
- Restarted posted installation complete and ta..da!! Linux started running.

I am still curious to run the Gsmart utility you shared and few other things in your write up to diagnose more on my faulty HDD.

Thanks a ton.

SazzAspire3

Today, the HDD once again fixed itself and booted successfully. i took this opportunity to run Gsmart utility. Attached the results here, not very encouraging, shows HDD failure but I am confused whether I should replace HDD on this basis or wait for it to rectify itself.
@aphanic
@billsey
Can you suggest a way forward from here?