Boot problem

[Eric "Shubes"]

joe wrote:
> .
> Eric wrote: 
>> No problem, Michael. Joe apparently switched them from what they 
>> were yesterday (or wasn't awake yet ;) ).
> 
> I have not switched the drives or the drive letters 
> and I have not changed any hardware or hardware configurations 
> (or anything else except the attempted Qwest DSL install) 
> since everything was working perfectly as of 7am Monday morning. 
> 

10-4

> Michael first wrote: 
>>> I would say  hda is bad. The table on this drive has disapeared 
>>> and you cant boot from it. 
> 
> Michael next wrote: 
>>> correction: hdb appears bad 
> 
> hdb is the older 8-gig partition that was booting and running as of yesterday. 
> hda is the new 80-gig partition that was booting and running perfectly for the
> past six months until the Qwest DSL setup attempt. 
> 

That's the opposite of what you said at 6:19 this morning:
> hda is an older 8-gig drive, but it is the one that is now booting
> and it apparently has the MBR on it.
> 
> hdb is a fairly new 80-gig drive, and we can still read all the 
> data on it by booting with a Knoppix live CD. 

Coffee hadn't kicked in yet, I'm guessing. ;)
I'm glad we're straight on this now.

> Michael first wrote (continuing): 
>>> Try removing hdb and try to boot. hda5 is the active partition, 
>>> or at least it was. It should boot from there even though 
>>> it is not labeled. 
>>>
>>> Does the BIOS recognize the drive size correctly upon boot? 
> 
> Yes, it did recognize both drive sizes correctly in the bios 
> before Eric disabled drive hdb in the bios (I think that is 
> what was done.) 
> 

Not quite right. The problem all along has been that the BIOS doesn't 
(entirely) recognize the drive. It sees it during the autodetect 
process, but the summary shows nothing there. This was the case before 
disabling hdb in the bios. We didn't notice the problem until we focused 
on determining why the machine was booting from hdb.

>>> I would get another drive (brand new) and use the cd it comes 
>>> with and mirror copy the entire disk, partition by partition. 
>>> Relabel the partitions, and you should be good to go. 
> 
> I'm currently making copies of crucial data from both hda and hdb 
> to a flash-stick and then copying the files to my laptop and 
> burning CDs as backup data.  I also wrote a note earlier this 
> morning to inquire if it was possible and what the procedure 
> would be for using a Knoppix live CD with K3B to burn DVDs 
> of the entire hda6 partition. 
> 

Sorry I didn't get back on that. I was thinking that it should be 
trivial, as long as you have two optical drives, one for running knoppix 
and one for burning, and presuming that knoppix sees the burner ok. Just 
be sure to mount hda6 first.

>>> Do not try to write to the old disk anymore, this will incur data loss.
> 
> Which hda or hdb? 

hda 80G (the one that won't boot)

> Again, thanks to everyone for the helpful ideas and suggestions 
> (although some do seem to be a bit contradictory at times ;)) 
> 


-- 
-Eric 'shubes'