Matthew Campbell wrote: > Nothing seems good enough. Do you want a picture? I'm not typing all of > that in on my tablet. Let's just let it go. I'm working on understanding > grub. I'm going to boot from a USB flash drive.
When I want to boot from the USB drive with GPT configured I first make sure the bios can understand GPT and then select "One Time Boot" (F12 after power on / reboot ) I already lost the track here, but I wonder why it should be that hard for you. I have 5 PCs around (1 server, 2 desktops and 2 notebooks) - all of them do it the same way. Only difference is the One Time Boot key, because it is bios specific. If I were you I would try with USB stick of reasonable size i.e. 8-256GB with GPT. If it does not work on the small USB with GPT - the problem seems to be GPT. If you can boot with GPT from the USB stick, you can repeat the configuration on the 4TB and try the same procedure. If it fails it is because of the 4TB disk. Somebody mentioned grub could handle GPT. My experience (and debian documentation) says it can handle it, if and only if it is installed from GPT enabled machine. It is not possible to install grub on a disk for GPT from non GPT booted machine. If my knowledge is outdated, please update me. https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI#Booting_from_removable_media