I installed Linux Mint on an external USB drive using my laptop and set GRUB to install on that drive. However, it also installed GRUB onto my laptop's internal Windows 11 drive, which means I have to adjust my boot order to use Windows if the external drive isn't connected. This setup works fine for my laptop, but I'm having trouble booting into Linux Mint from my desktop. The desktop's UEFI BIOS doesn't recognize the external drive as a bootable option, even though it sees the USB stick that I used for installation. I tried enabling CSM in the BIOS, but instead of fixing the issue, it just gives me a black screen with a boot error. I need assistance to get my desktop to boot from this external Mint install without issues. Any suggestions?
1 Answer
To boot from your external drive, you might need to create an EFI partition on it. Make sure to mount it at `/boot/efi` during installation, and then use a command like `sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --removable /dev/sdb` to install GRUB there. This should help the BIOS recognize it as a boot option.
I thought I had created the EFI partition correctly during installation, but I might have made an error. Is there a chance that this could conflict with the GRUB already present on the drive?