[Glastonbury] Booting from external drive

[Sean Miller]

Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

>Have you tried using various options from the command line in grub?
>  
>
Grub doesn't get that far, presumably because it tries to access the new 
hard drive which isn't configured?

>The configuration on the _external_  drive hasn't changed at all.
>
>If your old laptop died, are you sure the drive you took out was
>actually OK. Do you know that it spins up etc.? Could whatever fried
>your old laptop have nobbled the partition table?
>  
>
Nope, the old hard drive is fine.

I can access the Linux and Windows partitions from Linux, and I can 
access the Windows one from Windows... so they're all fine.

Just think that booting into Linux from the external might be a "neat 
and tidy" way to get around my wife's fear of messing around with dual 
booting on "our" laptop.

When I'm earning better money again I intend to get my own laptop... for 
the moment I'm treading carefully on this "shared" one...

>External drive _will_ boot to itself, if it hasn't been modified,
>surely? [Plug it internally to your new laptop and it would probably
>work immediately]
>  
>
No, it doesn't - as I said grub hangs.

I assume this must be because the boot sector refers to hardware 
locations that have now been taken by the new hardware ??

>  Nuke the old drive and reinstall Linux on it from scratch: Debian /
>  Kubuntu 5.10
>  
>
Please don't mention the "K" word...

Thanks Andy.. .lots of useful stuff there for me to play with tomorrow :-)

Sean