Installing 10.04 to 2TB disk, does not boot

[Matthias Brennwald]

On May 18, 2010, at 7:54 AM, ubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:

> Message: 10
> Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 13:54:28 +0800
> From: Christopher Chan <christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk>
> Subject: Re: Installing 10.04 to 2TB disk, does not boot
> To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID: <4BF22B94.7040709 at bradbury.edu.hk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> 
>>> When the 2 TB drive fails to boot, where does it fail?
>>> Does grub or anything show up?
>>> Are there any error messages?
>> 
>> If fails before GRUB shows up. I just get a message saying that there is no bootable disk.
> 
> Matthias,
> 
> Please list the partitions on your 2tb disks 'parted /dev/2tbdiskdevice 
> print' and we can try doing something about it.

Here is the result:

---------------                                                                          
Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will
be used.

                                                                          
OK/Cancel? o
Model: ATA WDC WD2003FYYS-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name  Flags
 1      17.4kB  8225kB  8208kB  ext4                  bios_grub
 2      8225kB  5248MB  5240MB  linux-swap(v1)
 3      5248MB  5453MB  206MB   ext4                  boot
 4      5453MB  2000GB  1995GB  ext4
---------------

I was surprised by the message regarding the corrupt GPT backup. What's that?


> No bootable disk means that the BIOS is not able to find any boot code 
> to load from disk.

Yes. As I mentioned before, this might be related to my motherboard (or its BIOS):

      http://communities.intel.com/thread/9779

However, I do not really understand what the author means by "The trick was to set the partition in the protective mbr as active", and how to do that. What does he mean by "active"? What is the "partition in the protective mbr"? How can I change these things?

Matthias