GRUB doesn't load from SSD

morxa · 2013-01-31 11:35:58

Hey,
I wanted to replace my HDD with an SSD. This is what I did:
1. boot into live disk, create partitions on my SSD: #1: /, btrfs, boot flag, #2: /, btrfs on LUKS [edit: I used fdisk, bad idea?]
2. mounted both partitions with compress=lzo, copied backup to the new disk.
3. chrooted into #1 (with proc, sys, /dev mounted properly)
4. installed grub2 (grub-install /dev/sdb)
5. changed /etc/default/grub and removed HDD-specific flags (I had a swapfile on my old drive)
5. created grub config (grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg)
6. changed /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab accordingly.

Then I wanted to reboot, but my laptop wouldn't turn off and the LED for disk activity was flashing all the time...
Eventually (after ~20min) I pressed the power button and it simply turned off.
Now, when I boot, BIOS takes about 15 s to load (before ~2s) while disk activity is high again (I have no idea what it is doing). If I try to boot from the SSD, the BIOS screen doesn't go away at all, if I leave the live system stick plugged in, I can boot into the live system.
Two other things, which puzzled me:
1. The SSD sometimes shows up correctly as "Samsung 840 Base" in BIOS, but sometimes the name is completely scrambled.
2. If I check the MBR, I can see GRUB2 on it. If I reboot a couple times, the MBR eventually gets erased (0xFFFFF.. written on it). I have NO clue why.

Also, if I boot the live system, sometimes I get a lot of errors (something about ata1, the ssd).

I also read about troubles with Samsung laptops (I got the Samsung 300V3A-S02DE) and SSDs, causing the laptop not to boot at all anymore, but that isn't my problem.

I activated AHCI, might that cause the problem? (I don't even know what the difference is).

One more thing: Is compression on /boot even possible? I read somewhere that it can only boot from uncompressed /boot, but since grub isn't even loading, I don't think this is the issue either.

The basic question is: Is the disk simply broken or is this a misconfiguration?

Thanks for any help!

Last edited by morxa (2013-01-31 11:48:18)

swordfish · 2013-01-31 12:29:18

Just a few thoughts/ideas:

- check the connection of the SSD to the laptop (maybe there's a loose contact)

- if you are able to start a live system (let's say a usb stick with an Ubuntu) you could check the SSD with the disks utility. Check before, if you have to enable S.M.A.R.T in your BIOS.

- maybe you could try the SSD on a different system (friend, family, colleague)

So you will know if the SSD is ok or broken.

morxa · 2013-01-31 14:04:18

swordfish wrote:

- if you are able to start a live system (let's say a usb stick with an Ubuntu) you could check the SSD with the disks utility. Check before, if you have to enable S.M.A.R.T in your BIOS.

Thanks for the hint! I checked the SMART values and got an UDMA CRC Error Count of 432. Apparently, this is a sign of cable issues so I put in my old drive and checked again, it has an UDMA CRC Error Count of 0. I'm not sure if this means the SSD is broken or not.
I also tested the speed of my old drive with hdparm:
cached reads: ~3000MB/s
buffered disk reads: ~83MB/s
This is seems normal to me, so I guess the cable works properly after all.

Also, the Ubuntu Disks utility couldn't find any partitions on the SSD, which is odd. I was able to mount them, read from them and write to them using an Arch Linux Live disk. Why can't Gnome Disks find the partitions?

swordfish · 2013-01-31 16:24:22

morxa wrote:

Also, the Ubuntu Disks utility couldn't find any partitions on the SSD, which is odd. I was able to mount them, read from them and write to them using an Arch Linux Live disk. Why can't Gnome Disks find the partitions?

Ah, that might be because of btrfs. I assume you already have installed "btrfs-progs"?

By the way - btrfs might be another possible reason for your problems.

Do you know this page of the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … Btrfs_root ?

That leads me to this idea: You could check by reformatting the SSD to - let's say - ext4. If it is running well - bingo.

Last edited by swordfish (2013-01-31 16:26:48)

morxa · 2013-01-31 20:27:18

swordfish wrote:

Do you know this page of the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … Btrfs_root ?

I think I've seen it before, but totally forgot about it, thanks!

I did something else though: I connected the SSD to a SATA-USB-adapter and booted from USB. Now it is working properly. So my ideas right now are:
1) The SATA port can't provide the power the SSD needs (1.7A compared to 0.85A needed by the old drive). But then I can't understand why I can read and write from/to the SSD, the only thing which isn't working is booting from the SSD.
2) There is some problem with AHCI or the SATA-Controller which only affects SSDs (I had AHCI turned off before but now the old drive works with AHCI turned on, too).

I will try to put the SSD into a different laptop and see if there are similar issues.

swordfish · 2013-01-31 20:43:22

morxa wrote:

I will try to put the SSD into a different laptop and see if there are similar issues.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Then you will know if it's a problem of the SSD or not.

swordfish · 2013-01-31 20:49:08

morxa wrote:

I did something else though: I connected the SSD to a SATA-USB-adapter and booted from USB. Now it is working properly. So my ideas right now are:
1) The SATA port can't provide the power the SSD needs (1.7A compared to 0.85A needed by the old drive). But then I can't understand why I can read and write from/to the SSD, the only thing which isn't working is booting from the SSD.

I'm not an expert in this, but I think it might be because of some load peaks while booting. And it would appear reasonable to me, if read/write doesn't need that much energy compared to booting. But I think there are maybe other people on this forum who know better.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-01-31 11:35:58

GRUB doesn't load from SSD

#2 2013-01-31 12:29:18

Re: GRUB doesn't load from SSD

#3 2013-01-31 14:04:18

Re: GRUB doesn't load from SSD

#4 2013-01-31 16:24:22

Re: GRUB doesn't load from SSD

#5 2013-01-31 20:27:18

Re: GRUB doesn't load from SSD

#6 2013-01-31 20:43:22

Re: GRUB doesn't load from SSD

#7 2013-01-31 20:49:08

Re: GRUB doesn't load from SSD

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