I have a Dell Optiplex 3040MT which runs Ubuntu 19.04 from an HDD via UEFI. I installed a NVMe SSD through a PCIe card adapter; Ubuntu sees it and I have R/W acccess. I want to use the SSD as my main drive, but the computer does not support booting to a NVMe SSD. The BIOS does not see the drive in the Boot or Hard Drive section. Under the expansion ports it see it as Storage, but does not see it as a boot device.
On a Raspberry Pi there is a process to boot from one drive but run the OS from another drive.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/boot-raspberry-pi-from-usb,39782.html
I tried that with Ubuntu, but it is still running from the HDD. How do I get Ubuntu to boot from the HDD and run from the NVMe SSD?
Response to questions:
The NVMe adapter is this one http://www.qnine99.com/goods.php?id=39
The SSD is a Toshiba 05DFH6 - PCIe Gen 3 4 lanes
doby - Last night I installed Ubuntu again trying what you said to do. I put the boot partition on the HDD and put the root partition on the SSD. After the install I rebooted and it came up to a grub prompt. I have no idea what to do there to get it to boot into Ubuntu.
Another round of installs, still only booting to the grub prompt. Here is what I tried. 1. Install from USB and created the following partitions: / on NVME biosgrub on HDD efi on HDD
I tried installing the bootloader to the biosgrub partition on the HDD. I tried installing the bootloader to the efi partition on the HDD. I tried installing the bootloader to the /dev/sda the HDD.
Each time after the install it reboots back to the grub prompt.
What am I doing wrong?
More snooping I find that I can see both the SSD and the HDD from the grub prompt. I can see the following when I run 'ls' at the grub prompt: (proc) (hd0) (hd0,gpt2) (hd0,gpt1) (hd1)
(hd0) is the HDD it has 2 partitions
(hd1) might be the SSD. But the Total size is very small, so I don't know.
(hd0) partition (hd0,gpt2) - Filesystem type fat - Total size 976896KiB
(hd0) partition (hd0,gpt1) - Filesystem type fat - Total size 96256KiB
(hd1) Device hd1: No known filesystems detected - Total size 514KiB
Can someone tell me, is (hd1) my SSD? If not, what is it and how do I get grub to detect my SSD?
parted -l
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