Hard drive weirdness.

David Vincent dvincent at sleepdeprived.ca
Wed Jul 23 14:42:56 UTC 2008


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David Gibb wrote:
> When I pulled sata drive #1, I get a blank screen with a blinking
> cursor. No GRUB, no nothing. When I pulled sata drive #2, I get "GRUB
> Hard disk error". When I pull both disks, I get a "System disk not
> found" error.
> 
> I guess my questions are as follows:
> 
> 1) Does anyone know why my PATA drive isn't showing up as /dev/hda?
> 2) I guess I could possibly explain the "GRUB Hard disk error" if the
> absence of a drive caused the drive number to change, but I don't know
> why the absence of the other drive causes a blank screen.
> 3) Any idea how I should tinker with this system so that I can still
> boot it in case one of the raid drives fails?

my guess is your grub is installed to sata drive #1 (/dev/sda) and your
sata disk #2 (/dev/sdb) is not set to bootable.

someone please correct me if this seems too convoluted.

1.  you want to install grub to your /dev/sdc so when both disks fail
grub can still find your stage1 and boot ubuntu.

boot into ubuntu, open a terminal, type these commands:

sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1  (pay attention to the output here)
root (hd0,2)  (i'm guessing that is the output from above, if not use
what grub spat out)
setup (hd0,2)
quit

now with both drives pulled ubuntu should still boot.

2.  in ubuntu install "gparted" in your favorite manner either with
synaptic or the add/remove programs app or apt-get or whatever.  open
gparted (found under the System menu in Administration) and locate your
/dev/sdb drive.  right-click the partition and see what flags are set on
it.  click the "boot" flag if it isn't ticked.  click "ok"

now if you pull the first drive ubuntu should still boot, if you pull
the second drive ubuntu should still boot, and if you pull both sata
drives ubuntu should still boot depending on where you've mounted your
raid1 (/home for example would cause problems).

hth

- -d

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