Grub2 fails to access external usb disk on systems with SATA

[Miguel Gaspar]

I have used grub and grub2 on external usb disk drives for some time, with no trouble.
This allows me to take my whole system from one machine to another, and boot it (either directly from the usb or by loading grub off the internal disk drive).
On a few more recent machines, I am no longer able to do that: grub2 on my external drive doesn't start (just presents a blinking cursor when the external drive is selected in the bios boot menu), and grub2 loaded from the internal drive, even if it sees the external drive, and lists the partitions on it, hangs when reading (ls (hd1)/) from it.
The drive is perfectly fine, it boots normaly on other systems, and I can access its contents normaly if I boot Oneiric from the internal drive or a livecd.
Both machines that give me problems have interal sata, so I can not install my external (IDE) drive on them.
I have tried other external enclosures and drives, with the same result.
Still, those machines will boot from usb flash drives with no problem.
Using "set debug=all" in grub2 console (loaded from the internal drive) I can get some error messages. I will try to post that output later.

I suspect this is not only grub's fault - will try other bootloaders when I have managed to do a backup.

This is the output of lspci and lsusb from one of the machines (Asus A52F - SX270V):
miguel@cdrsp-laptop-miguel:~$ sudo lspci
[sudo] password for miguel:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 18)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 06)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 06)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06)
02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
04:00.0 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.5 Ethernet controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMC250 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 05)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 05)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 05)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 05)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05)

miguel@cdrsp-laptop-miguel:~$ sudo lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1e5 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 152d:2338 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp. JM20337 Hi-Speed USB to SATA & PATA Combo Bridge

[Miguel Gaspar (ghaspias)]

After some more tests, I managed to boot my external usb disk by using super_grub_disk (note: not grub2, but grub-legacy), from UBCD v.511 installed on a flash drive.
Super_grub2_disk doesn't work, as well as gru4dos.

So, it seems the problem, even if it might be related to bios, can be worked around.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

What if you run ls -l? Also please post the debug output.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for grub2 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]