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GRUB fails to find second hard drive on bootup, but finds it from terminal

  • 02-11-2009 04:09PM
    #1
    Eliot Rosewater
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭


    EDIT: BIOS problem instead of GRUB I think, see post #2

    A wierd one for yee...

    Yesterday I installed Debian on my second hard drive. When it prompted to install a bootloader I declined because I figured I could edit my Ubuntu bootloader (on the first hard drive) to boot into Debian. However Ive been having lots of problems, and Ive tryed lots of way to get it to boot in Debian (using UUIDs and Device IDs etc) but nothing worked. Now I seem to have come to the source of the problem:

    My "second" hard drive is hd0 and my "first" hard drive is hd1. I confirm this by going to grub at terminal and using command "geometry" to confirm same. However on bootup my "first" hard drive registers as hd0, confirmed by the fact that booting (hd0,1) boots Windows XP. Then my second hard drive doesnt show up at all - not even as hd1.

    Anyone any ideas whats up?

    Notes:
    a) Ive subsequently installed openSUSE on my first hard drive and I had no bother adding it to Ubuntus GRUB.
    b) When I reinstalled Ubuntu a few days ago XP wouldnt load from GRUB. So I edited menu.lst from: 
    title		Microsoft Windows XP (Home Edition)
rootnoverify	(hd1,1)
map		(hd0) (hd1)
map		(hd1) (hd0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1
    to: 
    title		Microsoft Windows XP (Home Edition)
rootnoverify	(hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

    Cheers for any help!


Comments

  • #2
    Eliot Rosewater
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭Eliot Rosewater


    Ok so its probably not a GRUB problem.

    I went into my BIOS and it listed the second SATA hard drive, but said "not present" after it. So BIOS cant read it maybe.


  • #3
    Tillotson
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 218 ✭✭Tillotson


    I'm sorry, I'm having a little trouble following this.
    Ubuntu was on the first hard drive and you installed openSuse over it?
    You now want to dual boot openSuse(which resides on the first disk) and Debian(on the second disk)?

    Could you post your full menu.lst?

    A simple option might be to just install both OS's as normal and use your bios to switch the default boot device, F10 or similar. I can't think of a reason why this wouldn't work.

    If it was me I'd use the smaller hard disk to install whatever OS's you want on and then use the second hard disk as a shared media drive, formatted as ntfs


  • #4
    Eliot Rosewater
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,745 ✭✭✭Eliot Rosewater


    Gees apologies for all the confusion I feel a bit silly :(

    Basically whats happenin is that my IDE drive isnt being detected by BIOS, so Grub cant boot into it. As far as I know. Does anyone know whay this may be occurring? Perhaps because its a slave drive.

    The reason I put Debian on the IDE drive was that there was more space there, but know ill just have to move it over, somehow. I have Ubuntu and openSuse on the other HD.

    EDIT: Changed settings in BIOS there and now working. Apologies to the Unix forum for my elementary retardness.


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