MX-18 on SSD no longer boots after adding 4th storage hdd

[jsluk]

I dual boot MX-18 and Windows 10. Each OS was installed on separate Samsung SSD. MX being my daily machine which I have used for the last 3 months. This is a bit embarrassing. I have long misplaced the USB thumb drive which I used to install MX-18 (uefi) on the Samsung 860 EVO SSD. After plugging in the sata and power cables for the 4th drive (hdd), I lost the ability to boot into MX. In the past, I hit F8 (Asus P8Z77-V) during boot up and I can easily choose which operating system to boot. However, Windows 10 still boots up fine which was installed on the Samsung 840 Pro SSD.

Here is the question. If I download another copy of MX on a USB thumb drive, can I use the boot repair option in the live MX disk to repair my booting problem? Thanks.

[JayM]

Does it boot again after you disconnect the new drive? If it does, please provide your Quick System Info as well as the contents of /etc/fstab wrapped inside of [code] [/code] tags. If your fstab is mounting drives and partitions by their device names (i.e. /dev/sda1) instead of by their UUIDs it's possible that your fourth drive was assigned the device name formerly in use by your MX partition, just like Windows sometimes does with drive letters. It depends on the order in which they happen to be detected and mounted.

[jsluk]

Thanks for the suggestion. I unplugged every other drive but the one with MX linux on it. No boot, and I get this message. 'Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key'. Looking at the bios screen. The system detected the SSD where MX was installed. It just refuse to boot.

Can't get you the rest of the requested info since I am writing from my wife's Macbook.

[fehlix]

Here is the question. If I download another copy of MX on a USB thumb drive, can I use the boot repair option in the live MX disk to repair my booting problem?

Probaly, yes.

Note some BIOS/UEFI firmware re-set the stored EFI-boot-menu after detectig newly attached drives.
(But keep the "hardcoded" WinOS entry)
You might be able to add manually within the Asus BIOS-setup the efi-grubloader for MX, which you find on ESP-partition under /EFI/MX18.3/grubx64.efi. Some UEFI/BIOS-setup require to enable first secure boot in order to be able to select a EFI-grubx64-bootloader. Do turn afterwards secure boot off again. And further sometimes you need first to set a master password to get acces to selecting a EFI-file to boot from, e.g. on my ASPIRE I need this procedure,
set masterpassword, re-boot into BIOS again, enter Masterpassword, turn on secure boot, select EFI-file, turn off secure boot.... ufff.

Alternaively you might also try latest antiX19b2-ISO which provides a BOOT rescue menu, which allows you to boot directly into the grubx64.efi found on the MX partition.

[jsluk]

Thanks for the suggestions. I am not real good at this bios stuff. Right now when I boot up and hitting the F8 key, I see the selection for the USB drive, the Windows 10 SSD and the MX-18 SSD. It is just that when I choose the MX-18 one, it doesn't boot up so Windows 10 will boot instead.

I never set a password for this 5 year old Asus motherboard which has 6 internal sata drive connections. So maybe I need to do so. However, it did dual boot before. Think I will download the AntiX 19 iso and give that a try for boot repair.

One other question. If I do a boot repair operation, do I act on the efi partition or do I act on the MX-18 root partition? Thanks.

[fehlix]

If I do a boot repair operation, do I act on the efi partition or do I act on the MX-18 root partition?

Wenn booting in UEFI mode running MX Boot repair will
- "re-install" grub on the the selected "root" partition
- create a efi-grub loader and copies it on to the selected ESP (EFI System Partition)
under /EFI/MX18.3/grubx64.efi
- update UEFI-bootmenu through update of NVRAM-table, so the Boot entry will be shown (when pressing F8)

So to answer your question: Yes MX Boot repair will act on the EFI partition, you have selected as ESP target,
as you may have one or two ESP 's on the two SSD's, depending how you have installed MX Linux.

[jsluk]

Download and used the MX boot repair option with the USB thumb drive today. Actually did it on both the esp and the root partitions. Still no go. At this point, I will back up whatever data I need to keep and re-install fresh. Thanks for you help. Best regards.