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Have to keep my USB HD plugged in to dual boot Windows 10 and Linux Debian

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I have Windows 10 and Debian Linux (Jessie) installed on the same internal hard drive, in different partitions. I purchased Acronis True Image 2016 in July and started backing up to a USB hard drive.

All seemed to be well until around the beginning of October, when I think I updated to latest ATI 2016.

For the past month, I have to keep my USB hard drive plugged in to my computer to boot into Linux for some reason. If not, I get a message about a missing file from the Linux boot prompt (something about a file called 'plymouth').

Sometimes dual booting is restored by plugging the HD back in.

Other times, I cannot boot into Linux until I have re-run (ie. updated) the backup to the USB HD in Acronis.

This is very inconvenient. I would like to be able to boot Linux without plugging in the USB hard drive.

Can anyone help, please?

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Not an expert here but the referenced file Plymouth is basically a splash screen generator for Linux and I presume Debian (Jessie) uses it as a default install.  Even though Plymouth is supposedly just a splash screen generator it does have other functions and needs the ability to track filesystems in order for it to work.  I would suspect that with your external drive not attached to the machine during a boot attempt to Debian. Plymouth hiccups on the fact that a part of NTFS filesystem probably listed in the Grub loader is not found and produces the problems you are having.

I would recommend that you post your question on one or more Debian Forums for a possible answer.  I would say that when you re-run a backup to the external drive that process by True Image mounts the drive so once mounted Plymouth now can find it and doesn't complain.

I would think that the way around this would be to fdsk comment somehow to instruct either the Grub loader, the Debian kernel, and/or Plymouth itself to disregard the external drive if it is not connected to the machine when booted.  This is largely a guess on my part though.