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#1 2009-10-19 12:47:28

Jamie
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2009-09-21
Posts: 107

[SOLVED] GRUB working on wrong HDD?

I thought I'd make a quick post about this just because it's freaking me out a little and to see if anyone has seen anything like this and what could be causing it.

I've mentioned in another post that my computer only has two SATA ports.  I purchased a PCI SATA card and moved my DVD to it as it's 1.5G/s and my two HDDs I put on the board SATA (they're 3.0G/s).
Now I know there must be, at least, some minor issues with the SATA card because when I boot from the DVD, every Linux install disc I have (and I have a bunch, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE) hangs.  I can get them all to install in I pass the "edd=off" parameter but I never had to do that before the SATA card.
The DVD drive works perfectly so I don't know what the deal is with "edd=off" when trying to boot.

Anyway, on to the reason for the post.  I have two HDDs in my computer.  WinXP (for my wife) on the first drive (sda) and Arch on the second (sdb).  I reinstalled Arch yesterday and I installed GRUB to "sdb" (my computer BIOS defaults to booting the first HD so WinXP comes up for her, I hit "ESC" to get a boot menu during startup to select the second HD for me).
GRUB was installed to hd(1,0) which would be "sdb".  I get a "Error 17", something about the drive format not recognized.
After some tinkering I hit "e" at the GRUB menu and changed "hd(1,0)" to "hd(0,0)" and it booted perfectly.  Now, correct me if I'm wrong, "hd(0,0)" is the first HD not the one Arch is on, right?  How the heck is this working?

GRUB was installed to the correct HDD (the second one).  If I boot the first HDD (with WinXP) it goes straight to loading XP (no GRUB on that drive, which is right).  If I boot the second drive, GRUB comes up but I had to change the "hd(1,0)" to "hd(0,0)" for it to work which I don't believe "should" work.  I never had this happen before installing the SATA PCI card so I suspect it's what has caused this.

So am I nuts?  "hd(0,0)" shouldn't load Arch should it?

Last edited by Jamie (2009-10-19 23:32:06)


Thanks,
Jamie

archlinux x86_64

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#2 2009-10-19 16:15:52

qb1base
Member
Registered: 2009-07-30
Posts: 15

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB working on wrong HDD?

You're loading sdb first from the bios correct? That means you've made sdb>sda, that's why it works. If you had installed grub to the mbr of sda and booted it first, hd(1,0) would boot arch.

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#3 2009-10-19 17:24:42

Jamie
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2009-09-21
Posts: 107

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB working on wrong HDD?

qb1base wrote:

You're loading sdb first from the bios correct? That means you've made sdb>sda, that's why it works. If you had installed grub to the mbr of sda and booted it first, hd(1,0) would boot arch.

Well, "sda" is the first HD. "sdb" is the second HD.  If I don't touch anything, the computer defaults to booting "sda" which is the WinXP drive with no bootloader... er, well, WinXP's bootloader I guess wink.
The BIOS in my Compaq will allow me to hit "ESC" when it first comes on and enter a "BIOS" boot menu which will let me "pick" a HD or disc to boot.  What I do when I want to boot Arch is hit "ESC", then pick the second HD.  I would think it would should still be considered "hd(1,0)" shouldn't it?  It always was in the past, but it doesn't seem to be now.

Last edited by Jamie (2009-10-19 17:25:50)


Thanks,
Jamie

archlinux x86_64

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#4 2009-10-19 23:35:31

Jamie
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2009-09-21
Posts: 107

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB working on wrong HDD?

Hehe... boy do I feel like a big dummy tongue!
With the help of qb1base, I now understand how GRUB works.  All these years I've been using Linux on "one" HD with several partitions.  I didn't know when you have more that one HD and boot a different one first, in GRUB's eyes, it becomes hd(0,0).
Thanks buddy.

Last edited by Jamie (2009-10-20 01:52:12)


Thanks,
Jamie

archlinux x86_64

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