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#1 2018-08-05 09:11:25

jocheem67
Member
Registered: 2009-11-09
Posts: 243

[Solved] Data harddrive renewal in laptop booting issue

Hi all.

I'm in the process of renewing the original SATA harddrive in my (old) Dell xps 502LX. I suspect it's slowly failing, which it's entitled to i'd say.
Back when i had just bought it, I took out the removable drive and put in a SSD in that slot. I left the original SATA HD in place. To be honest I can't remember what I had to do back then to be able to use the SSD as my primary OS drive. I think the bios just gave me the choice from which drive to boot from. I'm pretty sure I started from scratch and reinstalled my linux OS after wiping Win 7.
So issue one is: with the new drive in place, the bios refuses to let me boot from the SSD. It does recognize both drives, but only lets me boot from the empty new HD. It's dell, so there are not many bios settings that I can manipulate.
So far it's only a bios issue and not OS related.Then the funny part.

When I take out the new HD and leave the slot empty, I still can't boot from the SSD. I put back the old HD however and then I can boot as I could in the first place. This makes me think that the OS (Arch fully updated) is involved in this issue.
So my questions are:

Can it be that bios harddrive boot settings depend on Arch settings in for example fstab? My ssd is "SDB" and old data HD is "SDA". If so, is it possible to change SDB into SDA without losing data (OS)?

Might grub be involved in some way? The bios message when I'm booting is:

Could not load operating system

Fstab

# /dev/sdb2 Root partitie
UUID=6f8c5bb2-998d-4436-a47a-5059a156ec89   /   ext4   rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1

# /dev/sbd3 Swap partitie
UUID=57cc269a-c31e-4ff5-a2c9-cdb562d24f81   none   swap   defaults 0 0

# /dev/sda1 Data partitie
UUID=9f78fa20-77e3-4540-b8b5-ec679649eece   /media/Data   btrfs   defaults 0 0

# mount dvd als gebruiker
#/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 ro,user,auto,unhide,nofail 0 0

Grub.cfg

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Arch Linux' --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-6f8c5bb2-998d-4436-a47a-5059a156ec89' {
	load_video
	set gfxpayload=keep
	insmod gzio
	insmod part_msdos 
	insmod ext2
	set root='hd1,msdos2'
	if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
	  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd1,msdos2 --hint-efi=hd1,msdos2 --hint-baremetal=ahci1,msdos2  6f8c5bb2-998d-4436-a47a-5059a156ec89
	else
	  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 6f8c5bb2-998d-4436-a47a-5059a156ec89
	fi
	echo	'Loading Linux linux ...'
	linux	/boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=6f8c5bb2-998d-4436-a47a-5059a156ec89 rw  quiet
	echo	'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
	initrd	/boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img

Last edited by jocheem67 (2018-08-09 04:14:17)

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#2 2018-08-05 11:24:33

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,427

Re: [Solved] Data harddrive renewal in laptop booting issue

This simply sounds like you installed GRUB on the HDD and not the SSD. Install GRUB on the SSD

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#3 2018-08-05 14:43:18

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,739

Re: [Solved] Data harddrive renewal in laptop booting issue

Expanding on V1del's comment.  The fstab has nothing to do with anything until a Linux kernel is running. 
It sounds like the previous install had GRUB on the drive you removed, and the you had actually configured to that GRUB to boot the kernel on the SSD.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#4 2018-08-05 16:34:09

jocheem67
Member
Registered: 2009-11-09
Posts: 243

Re: [Solved] Data harddrive renewal in laptop booting issue

Ah...interesting. I'll be back after fiddling around with my grub setup.

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#5 2018-08-09 04:13:02

jocheem67
Member
Registered: 2009-11-09
Posts: 243

Re: [Solved] Data harddrive renewal in laptop booting issue

It's fixed, but with a lot of trial and error.
Turned out I couldn't boot from usb anymore but were able to boot from a arch livecd. Had to organise cd-r's  and a computer with a burn drive. For me a bit of a blast from the past. Since Dell is known for slimmed down bios'es, still hard to just boot the live cd. Sometimes working, sometimes not.
I did a reinstall, which in hindsight has been overkill, since from the live cd I was able to boot into my exisiting OS but noticed that too late.

The solution in the end was to chroot into my newly installed system with new SATA harddrive present next to my SSD in the drivebay.
Create partition and filesystem and install grub to that drive.
Never mind the automatic swapping of /dev/sdX into /dev/sdZ, don't really know why that would happen though.

So the Dell just needs to boot from the SATA slot and indeed you guys were completely right. Thanks.

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