[SOLVED] Booting issue, multiple HD's

Archieman · 2011-02-07 17:45:08

Hi - I hope this is not a TOTAL noob question...

I have been using Arch for a couple months now and slowly converting all my machines from windows to Arch. It's been a beautiful process :-)

I am having a hard time with my main desktop machine. It has 2 hard drives, we will call them A & B. Windows was installed on A and all my data/files was on B. For the Arch install process, I unplugged B just to be safe. Arch installed like a charm as it always does, booting with GRUB worked great as well. As soon as I connect drive B though, the machine comes up with "invalid boot device", GRUB doesnt even have a chance to load. From my minimal windows knowledge, I suspect this is probably MBR related. I further suspect that MBR was written to drive B at some point and as soon as I connect it up, its trying to take over my system.

So I suppose my questions are two-fold:

1. Am I on the right track here?
2. If so, how do I go about SAFELY "removing" the MBR (or rewriting it) from HD-B? I know windows comes with some tools like fixboot and fixmbr but not sure if this will help me here...

Looking forward to your replies!

Archieman

Note: I have tried gparted CD which shows me that the "boot" flag is indeed on the right partition, but i did not see any other useful info.

SOLVED - I had a total brain fart and forgot that the BIOS determines which HD to boot from, once I edited it in there to be HD-A, everything boots fine. Sorry for the stupid question but perhaps it might help someone in the future!

Last edited by Archieman (2011-02-07 18:08:37)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-02-07 17:45:08

[SOLVED] Booting issue, multiple HD's

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