Grub and old hard drives

Karl Larsen k5di at zianet.com
Fri Jun 29 23:30:18 UTC 2007


Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Karl Larsen wrote:
>
>   
>>     For several years I have let the anaconda loader put the grub boot
>> message in the spot for such things on /dev/hda/. Fine, a couple of
>> years later I bought a much bigger hard drive and this Linux is on that.
>> But Grub is still using /dev/hda/.
>>
>>     These are both Western Digital hard drives and I have had good luck
>> with them. But the first to fail will be the oldest I expect. When that
>> happens Grub will fail. This is a real hard thing to fix :-(
>>
>>     So I have a plan. First read "Info Grub" and see how to put a Grub
>> boot in the boot section of /dev/hdb/. This I think is pretty simple. I
>> can do this today. But how to cause the file /boot/grub/grub.conf to use
>> this new boot point may be difficult.
>>
>>     Assuming this is possible I will let the list know.
>>     
>
> I think you need to distinguish between the grub loader proper,
> and the grub support files in /boot .
>
> You can put either on either (or both) disks.
> But if the loader is in the sdb/hdb MBR
> you'll have to tell the BIOS to look there.
> By default it will look in the sda/hda MBR.
>
> I presently have /boot on sdb, and copies of the grub loader
> on sda and sdb, in case something nasty happens to the rather old sda.
>
>   
    Well I have /boot on several partitions but the one used is on 
/dev/hdb5 now. The grub loader is on /dev/hda. I would like to put on 
/dev/hdb but it's not clear how to do that. Can you recall? Was it using 
grub-install or some other way? I will see if there is help for grub 
install.

Karl




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