[Sussex] failing hard drive - how do I boot the replacement ?

[John D.]

On Thursday 17 May 2007 21:41:49 John Crowhurst wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2007 21:08, John D. wrote:
> > Hi list,
> >
> > Current hdd seems to be failing (loud squealing noise>GUI stops>root
> > partition
> > errors listed in console login).
>
> Pull the old drive and boot from a live CD, run fdisk and make sure the
> first partition is marked active.
>
> Recreate grub using the live CD and it should install properly. You can
> always insert the old drive later.

and

On Friday 18 May 2007 00:08:39 Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> John D. wrote:
> > Hi list,
> >
> > Current hdd seems to be failing (loud squealing noise>GUI stops>root
> > partition errors listed in console login).
> >
> > So I've managed (with lots of assistance from Dave C) get another one
> > installed, and by using the Gparted live CD copy the data from the old
> > drive to the new one (plus expand the partitions on the new one as it's
> > larger than the old one).
> >
> > The problem seems to be grub. All the files seem to be copied over but
> > the new drive (now /dev/hda) won't boot. If I try grub-install from the
> > old drive and tell it to install to the new drive, it says that /dev/hdb1
> > has no matching BIOS drive (I've no idea what that means as the hard
> > drives seem to show up on the initial BIOS screen), if I change the BIOS
> > setting for the system to boot from the first drive (i.e. hdd -0 rather
> > than -1 presuming that -0 is the new hda drive and -1 is the older, now
> > hdb drive), I get lines/columns of GRUB (full screen).
>
> What? OK, why are you grub-installing from the old drive when you want
> to use the new drive?
>
> BTW, I tremendously dislike the "enlarge partitions" tools. I'm a big
> believer in "make a new partition, then use rsync or 'cp -a' to copy the
> old partition to the new partition" approach to the universe. It's
> typically one hell of a lot faster and doesn't bother copying blocks you
> don't care about.
>
> The BIOS drive part is fairly confusing: what does your
> /boot/grub/device.map say? And what does "fdisk -l" say?
>
> Swapping the drives in the BIOS is.... an adventure. You must edit or
> reset /boot/grub/device.map and /etc/fstab to deal with the change, or
> use some of the more interesting and never-properly-documented options
> to cope, for both grub and LILO.
>
> > If I try to force things one way or another by disconnecting the older
> > hard drive - I get told that theres a boot disk failure and to insert a
> > system disk and hit enter.
> >
> > Having looked at the obvious places for info on how this might be
> > achieved I'm getting no where.
> >
> > Can anyone explain how I might sort this ? Or point me toward idiot proof
> > instructions somewhere ?
> >
> > regards
>
> Yank the second drive, make sure your new drive is /dev/hda (first IDE
> controller, master) and use a live CD to poke around and edit
> appropriately. Do *NOT* use the "L:ABEL=/" settings in your /etc/fstab,
> because your old and new drives may both have partitions labeled this
> way after using various partiton copying tools.

Wow! Thankyou both for the replies - unfortunately most of that is a bit over 
my head (a bit ? about a mile or two!).

I'd rather not be lazy. Though I'm wondering if it might be possible to 
install a fresh version of the OS to the new hard drive and then copy over 
the old /home partition ? As I can make the old/failing hdd work for a while 
before if starts making the "noises" and start giving me any error 
indication.

Following the responses would be an adventure into new, uncharted territories 
for me. While I don't mind that at all, I don't want to find myself loosing 
the data (music, address book(s), office files etc etc - the usual stuff I 
suppose). I've no way of knowing just how much "speed is of the essence" 
factor might come into play?

What is likely to be the quickest, most likely, way forward do you think ?

regards

John D.