Comment 12 for bug 565189

I know this is an old issue that's been marked as invalid, but please hear me out.

I just ran into this yesterday, and it represents a pretty catastrophic user experience -- perhaps the second worst thing I can think of going wrong during the install process (the first being formatting the wrong drive).

So here's my anecdote, but it's essentially the same as the others so far. I have a primary drive that runs Windows 10. I plugged in an external drive that I wanted to install Ubuntu on. I booted from a USB flash drive that had the Ubuntu live image on it. I specified that I wanted to install to the external drive. Final confirmation dialog confirms that the external drive will be formatted and partitions created. All seems to be going according to plan.

Then I reboot and try to select the external drive from the BIOS-based boot select menu. Nothing -- just a blinking cursor. If I try to boot off my Windows 10 drive, then I get a GRUB bootloader (!?!) that lists Ubuntu and Windows. Not at all what I was expecting.

Even worse, if I try to boot without the external drive plugged in, GRUB falls into a command-line-based recovery mode.

At no point did the installer ask what drive to install the bootloader to.
During the final "point of no return" confirmation dialog, it didn't mention sda anywhere, or where it'd be installing the bootloader to.

Now I need to spend an hour or two tonight figuring out how to a. install GRUB onto the external drive, so I can actually boot it directly, and b. replace GRUB with the original Windows bootloader on the primary drive.

I'd really like *not* to be doing that with my Friday evening, and I'm sure other users will (and have) run into this exact issue -- any time a user wants to install to an external drive. This issue should remain open and actually get a fix.