Hello, I am trying to install Debian on a 4TB external HDD. Since I want to boot the HDD (also) on old systems which support only BIOS, and since the HDD is larger than 2TB, I decided to go with GPT partition table and BIOS boot (or, in other words: BIOS/GTP). I partitioned the HDD accordingly (see the details below), and installed Debian. During a pre-installation configuration the installer recognized BIOS boot partition, I configured the root partition as ext4 and installed grub into the disk's MBR. But when (after an installation) I am trying to boot the HDD, I receive an error message: 'error: unknown filesystem' and drop into a grub rescue mode.
What is the problem here and how it can be solved? It seems as though grub's Stage 1.5 loader (that is - core.img, which is supposed to be embedded in BIOS boot partition) doesn't contain modules needed to read ext4 filesystem, which seems very strange. Following are a bit more details about the partitions: I used the following command to partition the HDD: parted -s /dev/sdb mklabel gpt mkpart BIOS_boot ext2 1MiB 2MiB \ mkpart swap linux-swap 2MiB 16000MiB mkpart data ext2 16000MiB 100% \ set 1 bios_grub [root@arch]# parted /dev/sdb unit MiB print Model: WD Elements 25A1 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 3815415MiB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1.00MiB 2.00MiB 1.00MiB bios_grub 2 2.00MiB 16000MiB 15998MiB linux-swap(v1) 3 16000MiB 3815414MiB 3799414MiB Debian's installation was done on x64 BIOS-only system.
