Re: Boot Debian 13 from external SSD USB 3.0 which is connected to external USB 3.0 adapter

On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 08:18:38PM +0200, Pantelis Papadopoulos wrote:
> Greetings.
> I need your help with the following situation:
> 
> I want to install Debian 13 on an external SSD USB 3.0 and I want to boot from that drive which is connected to an external USB 3.0 adapter that is not recognized by the BIOS: the motherboard ASUS P5K (LGA775 Socket), which is old, supports fine USB 2.0 boot.
> And because it seems that there is no a solution to that problem (booting directly from external USB 3.0 adapter), I want to know if I could boot from USB 2.0 with GRUB or a GNU/Linux distribution (Debian 13) installed on it as an intermediary step and then select a USB 3.0 disk which would be connected to USB 3.0 external card to boot from it.
> 

The question is whether your Linux kernel has drivers for said USB3
adapter. Then yes, you could have Grub, the kernel, initramfs
(basically what usually lives in /boot) on your USB2 drive and put
the rest (your root fs, possibly your other fses) on your USB3
drive.

You can test this question by putting some minimal Linux on your
USB2 drive (even a Debian installer could do, you get a shell by
switching virtual consoles) and checking whether you can "see"
your USB3 drive from there.

Feel free to ask for more detailed instructions if you think this
is what you want to try.

> So, I searched for info and also I asked Proton Lumo (AI).

[...]

Sorry. I haven't the time (much less the motivation) to grovel
through LLM generated slop.

Cheers
-- 
t

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