Debian10 on SSD, not seeing Sata HDD (Dell laptop)

[Vsat]

Hi, I am a beginner to Linux, moving from Windows. I have a fairly new Dell Inspiron laptop, with an M.2 SSD drive on which I have successfully installed Debian 10, with Gnome & Cinnamon packages. The machine also has a SATA drive with Windows 10 installed, I wish to remove Win10 and be fully Debian, but I need Debian to see both drives.

BIOS: If I enable both drives in the bios it boots to Windows, if I enable SSD only it boots to Debian. I am computer literate on Windows, I have no experience of configuring grub if that is what is required, but should be able to follow stage by stage instructions.

BIOS / Settings / System Configuration / Drives: check boxes for Sata-0 & M.2 PCIe SSD-0.
BIOS / Settings / General / Boot Sequence / 'Debian' is ticked. Boot option name: debian, File system list: HD(1,GPT,4CB348....), File name: \EFI\debian\shimx64.efi

I should add: I've now used a partition tool to delete the minor partitions on the HDD so it no longer boots to Windows.
Many thanks!

[p.H]

What is the problem exactly ? The title says "Debian not seeing SATA HDD" but the post does not talk about this at all.

[sunrat]

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. You want to boot to Debian with both drives enabled? Sounds like you need to install GRUB in Debian. Enable both drives then boot Debian with Boot Select menu (check your mobo manual, it's F12 on mine),REFInd, or some other method, then do

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grub-install

then

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update-grub

. This should enable you to boot both Debian and Windows using GRUB. If you subsequently wipe Windows, just run update-grub again afterwards.
Note this is a simple explanation and should install GRUB on your Debian drive. Sometimes it is less simple.

As p.H just mentioned, topic title unclear. Debian will not see a drive which is disabled in BIOS/UEFI Setup.

[Vsat]

thank you p.H and Sunrat, for your replies.
Sorry for not being clear enough: with both drives enabled in the bios, and logged on to Debian (SSD), in file explorer it could not see the SATA HDD (but it could see a 3rd external usb NTFS drive).
I'll run the grub commands later today; so even without Win10, just Debian, I need grub to handle/mount the two internal drives?
thanks for your help!

[p.H]

GRUB is already installed (otherwise Debian would not boot) and has nothing to do with handling drives or mounting filesystems.
What file explorer are you using ?
What is the output of

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fdisk -l

(as root) ?

[sunrat]

GRUB is already installed (otherwise Debian would not boot) and has nothing to do with handling drives or mounting filesystems.

That wasn't clear, the "disabling drives" bit was confusing. Should be able to select either OS with both drives enabled if set up right.
But yeah, GRUB has nothing to do with what shows in the file manager so forget GRUB now you have clarified that. I recall from using Xfce years ago an extra mount parameter was needed for drives to show in Thunar file manager. I don't know how Gnome or Cinnamon handle that.

What file explorer are you using ?
What is the output of

Code: Select all

fdisk -l

(as root) ?

^important info.

[Vsat]

thanks for replies. I formatted and installed Debian on 2nd drive, then followed a tutorial to edit GRUB, now it boots fine to Debian on the SSD.
Thanks for your help, so this issue is closed.

# sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: CT1000P5SSD8
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 85FF1A32-0E37-41F5-8D2F-B313C17657EA

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 1050624 1951522815 1950472192 930.1G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 1951522816 1953523711 2000896 977M Linux swap

Disk /dev/sda: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Disk model: ST2000LM007-1R81
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 020B686E-31A8-4EF6-93BF-6DF75517931F

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
/dev/sda2 1050624 3905028095 3903977472 1.8T Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3 3905028096 3907028991 2000896 977M Linux swap

[p.H]

I formatted and installed Debian on 2nd drive, then followed a tutorial to edit GRUB, now it boots fine to Debian on the SSD.
Thanks for your help, so this issue is closed.

What issue ? What the hell does this have to do with the initial topic ? You did not mention any boot issue before.
You did not install another copy of Debian on the hard disk just to "see" (whatever that means) it in the first copy on the SSD, did you ?