pi booting problem after external USB hard drive connection

[AsawariC]

I am using Raspberry Pi 2 and after the attempt to connect the external USB hard drive ( Seagate 1TB) to raspberry pi, It is not booting properly. When I switch on the pi, I see the rainbow screen then press shift for recovery mode and then white screen with message 'Select os to boot' without any options which can be seen in attached image. I have tried booting pi by disconnecting the hard drive but the problem persist.
Can anyone please tell me what has caused this situation and how to solve this problem?
I will be thankful for appropriate suggestions and help.

[AsawariC]

Apology for no attachment in the question asked above. Please find the image as attached here.

[fruit-uk]

I am using Raspberry Pi 2 and after the attempt to connect the external USB hard drive ( Seagate 1TB) to raspberry pi, It is not booting properly.

Are you trying to run from the rootfs on the new drive? It is not clear from your post

When I switch on the pi, I see the rainbow screen

Which rainbow screen? The main, large one or the low power indicator?

I have tried booting pi by disconnecting the hard drive but the problem persist.

Have you altered any of the files in /boot?
If not then it sounds like a broken install on SD and time to re-image.

[AsawariC]

Hello, Thank you for the reply.
1. I did not try running from rootfs on the new drive. In fact, this problem started when I tried to boot the pi first time after connecting hard drive to pi.

2. The rainbow scree is the bigger rainbow screen which we see during boot process and not the small icon.

3. I haven't modified any of the particular files in the /boot but I am not sure if I have done it while following the instruction s from one of the following sites

I)http://www.modmypi.com/blog/how-to-moun ... pi-raspian

II)https://learn.adafruit.com/external-dri ... t/overview

[fruit-uk]

The first link suggets modifying /etc/fstab
I suspect you have broken that somehow and the Pi cannot find the root partition to run the OS

You may be able to boot from the card but I have no idea how on a Pi, perhaps someone else will be a long with suggestions.

Failing that you need to edit the file back to point to the rootfs, probably from linux - a Pi with a new card and cardreader, a liveCD in another PC etc.

[AsawariC]

Thank you very much for giving a thought for my problem and reply.
Could you please elaborate the last point mentioned in ur suggestion? I could not get it clearly.

[fruit-uk]

I guess you have a PC running Windows.
Windows cannot see the linux filesystem on the SD by default - I believe there are apps that you can install for this but I am not a Windows user so cannot suggest anything

An alternative is to download and burn a linux LiveCD. There are many to choose from but a ubuntu version if available may suit.
This will boot your PC into linux. It will not harm your Windows install at all.
Once booted you can put your SD in a cardreader, plug it in and see and edit the linux filesystem from there.

You could install raspbian/noobs on a new SD card for your Pi.
Once booted you can put your old SD in a cardreader, plug it in and see and edit the linux filesystem from there.

[AsawariC]

Thank you fruit-uk for kind explanation. I am a Linux user and currently working on Linux mint 17.1
I have been trying to solve the problem by connecting SD card to Linux system.
I am not sure which file would have affected in /boot and hence not able to proceed.
I tried editing /etc/ fstab file with nano editor but found it not different from /etc/fstab of working boot able SD card.

Could u suggest which file need to be cheked/worked on for solving the boot problem?

[fruit-uk]

The modmypi link you posted suggests modifying just /etc/fstab to add the new drive so I assume that's all you did

I have a USB stick of a recent raspbian HD install here (so the FS links will be different). For reference..

Code: Select all

proc            /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
/dev/mmcblk0p1  /boot           vfat    defaults          0       2
#/dev/mmcblk0p2  /               ext4    defaults,noatime  0       1
/dev/sda3	 /               ext3    noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1

/dev/sda1       /media/usb0     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/sda2       /media/usb1     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/sda3       /media/usb2     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0

# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
#   use  dphys-swapfile swap[on|off]  for that
/dev/sda2	 none            swap    sw              0       0

and here is the relevant snippet of sudo fdisk -l ..

Code: Select all

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdi1            2048      155647       76800    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sdi2          155648     1204223      524288   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdi3         1204224    15632383     7214080   83  Linux

Hopefully you can see how they relate to each other - and note the original /dev/mmcblk0p2 commented out - not removed - a good habit to get into if you haven't learnt by trial and many errors already

Other than that, check the syntax of the file - and that it has an empty line at the end

[AsawariC]

Thank you very much for suggestions. I will see and try to solve the problem