partitioned drive not appearing and ubuntu not booting

[mickskitz]

So I have installed Ubuntu 13.10 on one of my drives, but when I restart my PC, and I select boot menu (F11) and choose the drive which Ubuntu is installed on, Windows 8.1 still is booting as a priority and I don't know how I can get into Ubuntu.

Also, the disk that I partially partitioned is now not showing (or is showing as Unallocated in Disk Management) while showing the 20gb which I allocated for the Boot section (and other relevant Ubuntu installations), the Swap drive I created, and the remaining 1.8 tb of the drive is saying Unallocated. This has important files on it which I still need, but in "This PC" (Win 8 version of My Computer) it is not showing that drive at all, only when I go to the Disk Management section of Computer Management? Also shortcuts to files on this drive (which was the s no longer work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[skittle]

Unfortunately Linux partitions will not show up in Windows. Blame MS. Realistically the only way to share data between windows and linux is to keep data on NTFS partition.

As for why ubuntu will not boot? hard to say... If GRUB is not loading then something is wrong.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI
(check step 5 here)

 

[stillblue]

Let's get the terms straight so we can be sure we're on the same page. A drive is a physical object and a partition is a part of a drive. My hard drive can have several partitions. You do not select a partition to boot with F11, that is to tell the computer what physical object to boot from, a USB Drive, the cd/dvd drive or hard drive are examples.

So, do you have two drives? What are they? How did you partition the 2T drive? Did you remove the windows drive during the install of Ubuntu? Do you have safeboot on in your Bios? Finally, where on the 2Tdrive did you put the ubuntu partition? ie beginning or end of the partition?

 

[mickskitz]

Let's get the terms straight so we can be sure we're on the same page. A drive is a physical object and a partition is a part of a drive. My hard drive can have several partitions. You do not select a partition to boot with F11, that is to tell the computer what physical object to boot from, a USB Drive, the cd/dvd drive or hard drive are examples.

So, do you have two drives? What are they? How did you partition the 2T drive? Did you remove the windows drive during the install of Ubuntu? Do you have safeboot on in your Bios? Finally, where on the 2Tdrive did you put the ubuntu partition? ie beginning or end of the partition?

Hi, yes I understand. I actually have 3 drives, 1 SSD (which Windows is on) and 2 HDD (one of which has Ubuntu
installed on a partition and has 2tb of storage). I am selecting the drive with the Ubuntu partition.

How I partitioned it - When going through the installation wizard for Ubuntu, I select the "Something Else" option so that I can choose my partition (as otherwise it will just wipe my SSD), the next screen allows me to create a partition, which I selected on my 2tb drive, I allocated 20gb for the boot drive (ext4 - mount panel "/") and 10gb swap drive (as it suggested I create this swap drive). I then select the partition from the list of places to install, and then the installer does it's thing. I selected "The Beginning" and format the partition as from my limited understanding, this makes it easier to boot from (in theory). I did not remove the Windows drive during the process. I don't know what Safeboot is, but it is a MSI motherboard with their boot menu which allows a preference of which drive to boot from (and I can see the drive which Ubuntu is installed on there) and then I select that, but it appears as if Win 8.1 just overwrites that boot command and launches.

Thanks for any help

 

[stillblue]

It sounds like you did everything right except telling it where to put grub, the ubuntu launcher. No problem though. Start your computer with your Ubuntu install media. 1st take a look at the partitions and see if your data is still intact. Then connect to the net and install boot-repair https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair for instructions, accept the default. It should fix you up.

what does worry me though is that you can't see any of the drive. while windows doesn't feel the need to acknowledge the existence of other formats and you won't be able to see the linux partitions the rest should still be visible.

 

[stillblue]

In the event that you somehow accidently formatted the whole drive you can still recover what wasn't actually written over by installing testdisk on your install media. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk for instructions on how to use.

 

[mickskitz]

Let's get the terms straight so we can be sure we're on the same page. A drive is a physical object and a partition is a part of a drive. My hard drive can have several partitions. You do not select a partition to boot with F11, that is to tell the computer what physical object to boot from, a USB Drive, the cd/dvd drive or hard drive are examples.

So, do you have two drives? What are they? How did you partition the 2T drive? Did you remove the windows drive during the install of Ubuntu? Do you have safeboot on in your Bios? Finally, where on the 2Tdrive did you put the ubuntu partition? ie beginning or end of the partition?

It sounds like you did everything right except telling it where to put grub, the ubuntu launcher. No problem though. Start your computer with your Ubuntu install media. 1st take a look at the partitions and see if your data is still intact. Then connect to the net and install boot-repair https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair for instructions, accept the default. It should fix you up.

what does worry me though is that you can't see any of the drive. while windows doesn't feel the need to acknowledge the existence of other formats and you won't be able to see the linux partitions the rest should still be visible.

Let's get the terms straight so we can be sure we're on the same page. A drive is a physical object and a partition is a part of a drive. My hard drive can have several partitions. You do not select a partition to boot with F11, that is to tell the computer what physical object to boot from, a USB Drive, the cd/dvd drive or hard drive are examples.

So, do you have two drives? What are they? How did you partition the 2T drive? Did you remove the windows drive during the install of Ubuntu? Do you have safeboot on in your Bios? Finally, where on the 2Tdrive did you put the ubuntu partition? ie beginning or end of the partition?

It sounds like you did everything right except telling it where to put grub, the ubuntu launcher. No problem though. Start your computer with your Ubuntu install media. 1st take a look at the partitions and see if your data is still intact. Then connect to the net and install boot-repair https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair for instructions, accept the default. It should fix you up.

what does worry me though is that you can't see any of the drive. while windows doesn't feel the need to acknowledge the existence of other formats and you won't be able to see the linux partitions the rest should still be visible.

Ok, so now Ubuntu boots, but Win 8 doesn't any more 🙁

When I let my computer do a standard boot (where I don't select the Ubuntu boot drive), it comes up with this error

err: disk 'ldm/a3943930-0014-11e3-be69-d43d7ed8930e/Volume1' not found
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>

at which point I can enter commands (although not sure what commands to use, as ls lists the 3 hdd [hd0], [hd1], [hd2] connected to my pc, but my understanding of terminal is very limited)
This same error occurs if I select my ssd drive from the boot menu.

Here is also the URL for the boot repair http://paste.ubuntu.com/7141195/

Thanks heaps for your help so far

 

[spankmon]

If your boot priority in BIOS is set to SSD as first choice, and regular boot is returning a grub error... then it sounds like the Grub loader is installed on the SSD (which is wrong for your intended setup). If this is the case, then you need to repair the SSD bootloader by running the Win8 install disk and tell it to repair the Win8 bootoader on the SSD. Doing this will then prevent your booting to Ubuntu until you repair the Grub bootloader and make sure it's installed on the master boot record of the same drive that Ubuntu is installed (sdb, sdc ??). Example: If Ubuntu is installed on partition sdb1, then install grub on the device sdb master boot record. You need to tell the boot repair tool to put grub on that drive specifically.

There might also be a conflict if the BIOS is set to UEFI boot, and Ubuntu is installed as MBR rather than GPT... not sure about this, though. Safe boot might also be interfering. Not sure about that one either.