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I have 2 hard drives on my machine. One 500GB(master drive) and one 40GB(slave drive). I originally had Windows 7 installed on my first drive(i.e. 500GB drive). I am planning to install LUbuntu alongaside Windows 7. Now i installed LUbuntu on my machine. I wanted to keep LUbuntu completely seperate from my windows installation and hence wanted to install it on the 40GB drive. So during installation I select the 3rd option and in that I select the bootloader installation drive as this 40GB drive. I follow all the steps as mentioned on LUbuntu site for installation. The installation proceeded smoothly and PC restarted.

However after installation I don't see LUbuntu anywhere. I didn't get any option during startup to select OS. And to my horror, the 40GB drive is missing from my "My Computer" window if I run Windows OS. My Windows OS still works perfectly normal. But the LUbuntu OS and the drive on which it was installed both disappeard.

Please help me resolve the issue as I want to start working on LUbuntu. Please help.

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  • Does the 40GB drive still spin up & work (vibrate like a running drive)? Booting with the live Lubuntu cd/dvd/usb you used before should let you run # fdisk -l or/and gparted to see if both drives are still accessible & working
    – Xen2050
    Dec 14, 2014 at 16:14
  • And if the drive still works ok, you may have installed the bootloader (grub) onto the 40GB drive only, but it looks like your computer boots from the 500GB windows drive, so the new grub bootloader never gets run. Try temporarily changing the boot order to boot from the 40GB drive first and see if anything's different
    – Xen2050
    Dec 14, 2014 at 16:17
  • When I once again try booting from bootable USB,and then within the trial Lubuntu, again try installing Lubuntu, it does recognize the previous version and also gives me option to remove the same and do a fresh reinstall. I believe, this indicates both the drives are accessible and working fine. It's only the problem with the bootloader which is where I think I went wrong somewhere. Please help. Dec 14, 2014 at 16:43

2 Answers 2

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The fact that Lubuntu isn't visible from Windows is normal. Lubuntu uses EXT4 by default, which Windows can not or refuses to read. (Although there are EXT drivers like Ext2FSD). If you don't need to access the Lubuntu partition, leave it.


Since you installed Lubuntu on a completely different drive, you also have to tell your BIOS to boot from this drive. The Windows Bootloader won't boot anything but Windows. GRUB2, which is used by Lubuntu, boots both Lubuntu and Windows. So in order to be able to select your OS on startup, you need to boot from the 40GB drive.

To do this, open your BIOS Setup, go to a menu that says something like "Boot order", "Boot configuration", ... and set the 40GB drive as primary boot device, then reboot.

You should now be prompted with an OS selection screen. If not, and it boots straightly into Lubuntu, open a terminal and run sudo update-grub. After a reboot it should then work.

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  • But Windows should see the 2nd HD, especially in it's partitioning program. it may want to format it since it can't read it...
    – Xen2050
    Dec 14, 2014 at 16:50
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Since Lubuntu appears to have been installed to the secondary drive successfully, you could try running Boot-Repair to (nearly) automatically fix problems with it not booting right.

It's help.Ubuntu.com help/wiki page is here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
and it should be able to do:

Boot-Repair is a simple tool to repair frequent boot issues you may encounter in Ubuntu like when you can't boot Ubuntu after installing Windows or another Linux distribution, or when you can't boot Windows after installing Ubuntu, or when GRUB is not displayed anymore, some upgrade breaks GRUB, etc.

Boot-Repair lets you fix these issues with a simple click, which (generally reinstalls GRUB and) restores access to the operating systems you had installed before the issue.

It sounds like it should be able to fix your problem. Here's what it says to do:

  • Install either from an Ubuntu live-session (boot your computer on a Ubuntu live-CD or live-USB then choose "Try Ubuntu") or from your installed Ubuntu session (if you can access it)
  • connect to the Internet
  • open a new Terminal, then type the following commands (press Enter after each line):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &)

Then run it with:

  1. launch Boot-Repair from either :

    • the Dash (the Ubuntu logo at the top-left of the screen)
    • or by typing boot-repair in a terminal
  2. Then click the "Recommended repair" button. When repair is finished, note the URL (paste.ubuntu.com/XXXXX) that appeared on a paper, then reboot and check if you recovered access to your OSs.

  3. If the repair did not succeed, indicate the URL to people who help you by email or forum.

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