Bios cannot detect boot drive, but Gparted/ubuntu can access it fine

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I'm running a dual-boot system of windows and ubuntu. I have an HDD and SSD, with windows and ubuntu installed to my SSD, and the EFI boot partition installed to my HDD. This setup has been working fine for a year.

Very recently my BIOS is now unable to detect my HDD with the boot partition on it. Looking at the BIOS boot startup priority list I can see my SSD, but not my HDD. My obvious conclusion was that the HDD has failed, so I install ubuntu on a USB, and live-cd into my system. BIOS detects the USB just fine.

I run GParted to make sure, and somehow the HDD is still there, still being detected, the HDD is passing S.M.A.R.T tests, I can mount partitions and read files off it normally. So the HDD definitely works, it's just that my BIOS is not detecting it for some reason. Can someone please enlighten me?

I ran the boot-repair tool because I thought this might be an issue with grub, but since the BIOS isn't seeing my HDD I dont think that is relevant. However the boot-repair program also prints off a massive log of boot related data, which i have shared. Hopefully that helps somebody. I am just baffled as to why the BIOS is being selectively blind now.

Here is my boot-repair report. http://paste2.org/gZehKKUJ

Right now I'm thinking my only solution is to create a new boot partition on my SSD, although I have no idea how to do that, and worry that having a HDD undetected by the BIOS might have long term problems. Thanks in advance.

Daniel

Posted 2017-03-09T03:26:22.577

Reputation: 11

secure boot turned on? – user3528438 – 2017-03-09T04:28:40.947

Secure boot was always disabled. – Daniel – 2017-03-09T05:01:10.777

So i added a new EFI partition on my SSD which was recognized by the BIOS. however the BIOS still doesnt detect the boot partition. This could either be a problem with my BIOS, or maybe i set up the new Efi Partition incorrectly. – Daniel – 2017-03-09T05:07:41.353

You have EFI firmware, not BIOS. It's not clear that your firmware is truly unable to detect the disk; it may just be that the NVRAM entry referring to the boot loader on the disk was accidentally deleted. Most firmware setup tools have a way to report on what disks are available. You may want to use that to see if the disk shows up. If I'm right it'll appear, and you should be able to use efibootmgr to create a fresh entry. OTOH, if Boot Repair has failed to correct the problem, using efibootmgr manually may not help. – Rod Smith – 2017-03-12T22:17:17.260

Answers

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After trials and tribulations, I finally tracked down the root of my problem. My UEFI was acting up because it had decided replacing my CD drive with an HDD caddy in my laptop was a no go, and refused to boot from anything, including my SSD.

So since installing a new Ubuntu on my SSD and trying to boot from that didn't work, and the original CD drive was nowhere handy (this hardware change took place a year and a half ago with no problems then btw), I had to repartition my SSD to MBR,(reinstall my OS's) and then switch from UEFI to BIOS (UEFI legacy mode).

Huge pain but at least my system now works again. Not much else to say other than screw UEFI.

Daniel

Posted 2017-03-09T03:26:22.577

Reputation: 11

Asked: 2017-03-09T03:26:22.577

Viewed: 1 667 times

Active: 2017-04-01T02:32:50.960