How to move GRUB from the MBR to another partition?

Question

So, I'm fairly new to Ubuntu. My current set-up is dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu, what I want to do is move the GRUB from the MBR to another partition so I can encrypt the Windows 10 partition with VeraCrypt. In order to do that the MBR must empty so VeraCrypt can install its own boot loader, and this way I'll be able to use GRUB as a second boot loader to boot to Ubuntu.

I tried moving the GRUB to my Ubuntu partition with no much luck as some pretty nasty errors:

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Error while installing the bootloader

Installing for i386-pc platform.
grub-install: warning: File system `ext2' doesn't support embedding.

grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..

grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

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The above error showed up after using Grub Customizer, but using the terminal gave the same result as well.

Any help to solve my problem would be greatly appreciated!

P.S.: I'm not very experienced with the terminal so it would be very helpful if you could provide the commands I would need to use!

Thank you!

Solution

MBR=Master Boot Record. It is the keeper of the partition table data and it is always located on the first partition of (the first) disk. I guess you meant moving GRUB to another partition (possibly the Ubuntu partition). Here is how: how to move grub boot from one partition to another in linux.

Ext2 is an old partition standard. Maybe you should move to ext3 or even ext4.

Encrypting the entire Win10 partition might get Win to run very slow. Encrypting just your personal stuff (on a separate partition maybe) might be more easy.

Comments

[oldfred]

Is system UEFI or BIOS? And use of ext2 is unusual unless you have full drive encryption with LVM? I would just boot Ubuntu and install grub to MBR of flash drive if system really is BIOS. If flash drive is sdb: sudo grub-install /dev/sdb But you may need this also: askubuntu.com/questions/503417/… Since only using MBR, then you can still use flash drive for data.

[Mark]

Thanks for the answer! I tried that and I stumbled upon the same issue with the "blocklists". Any other recommendation? I guess I could use the --force command to overwrite it, but I'm afraid I'll end up ruining everything again.

[ipse lute]

You can take a look here: bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=169124, which is kinda long and technical stuff, or here: askubuntu.com/questions/420778/…, which i find more manageable.

[Quidam]

If it's a dedicated grub partition, ext2 is okay, and ext3 or ext4, with for instance the journalization, are not needed. Ext2 is very often chosen or recommended as the format for the grub partition.