My computer set up is this; Pentium 4 Dell Dimension desktop with 2 hard drives. /hda = Linux and /hdb = Windows 7. It is set up to boot to /hda (master) and the Grub menu selection includes an entry to boot /hdb (slave) (Windows). Both disks are ATA.
I just bought a 250 GB SATA drive and I cloned my Linux partitions onto this new disk. So far, it seems to be working and all my files are here.
The first problem is when I boot up I get a “Primary disk not found” message and the option to hit F1 to continue or F2 to go to setup. I hit F1 and it continues booting up without any further issues.
The bigger problem is when I re-attach the Windows ATA drive; Depending on whether it is Master or not I run into one of two situations
(when Master)The machine takes a loooooooong time to boot up, still comes to where I have to hit F1, yet I can boot into Windows or Linux.
(when not Master)It comes up fairly quickly, I hit F1 but Windows cannot be found.
When Windows doesn’t work and I still boot up, I can’t find the other hard drive anywhere. #sudo fdisk -l only comes up with the SATA drive, not the Windows one.
So there are 3 things I want that I am not sure how to get;
Automatically boot to Grub without having to hit F1
Faster bootup through the bios
Being able to boot to Windows or Linux without any problems.
Am I missing something? Is this because of a mixed ATA and SATA? Is there something I need to fix in the BIOS? I’m not sure where to look!
Well, i don’t have much experience from working with sata disks, i am still old school ata, but as far as i know, the sata will always get priority over the ATA unless you force master the ata. Your bios might not be able to work very well on such a configuration, sec. ata and master sata. What you can try is either put them both master(sata has different port so one of them should show as a secondary master) or you can also try reinstalling grup. Boot your suse while the ata is master, go to yast>system>boot loader. If i am not mistaken, there you should be able to auto-detect the drives and reinstall your boot loader. Would try mounting both as master just out of curiosity though:D. Hope this helps, cheers.
There is an issue with mixing SATA and PATA disks, perhaps @ please_try_again explains it better than I can here
Does the following quote form ArchLinux Wiki help you better understand?
udev loads kernel modules by utilizing coding parallelism to provide a potential performance advantage versus loading these modules serially. The modules are therefore loaded asynchronously. The inherent disadvantage of this method is that udev does not always load modules in the same order on each boot. If the machine has multiple block devices, this may manifest itself in the form of device nodes changing designations randomly. For example, if the machine has two hard drives, /dev/sda may randomly become /dev/sdb.
This is not uncommon that device names change as described above, in particular when you mix SATA and IDE drives. I also had the case where from time to time an external USB drive became sda. The only thing you can do is avoid using device by names in configuration files like /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst and reinstall Grub with an adequate device.map. In case you’re mixing IDE and SATA hds together, you could spare yourself some headaches by getting rid of the IDE ones.
Post #20 in this thread
The idea of just getting a 2nd SATA to put Windows on it is one I have thought of, but would rather avoid it (spend money on Windows? gasp). Does using Clonezilla to copy Windows from one hard disk (PATA) to the other (SATA) trigger any “you must validate” warning bells?
The idea of the drives switching around may help somewhat. That may be why when the computer is booting up faster but unable to find Windows it may be because they are switched somehow and I need to have the Grub entry point to another location. I was running out of time and patience, so I haven’t pursued it yet.
Another idea is to get a USB or Firewire enclosure for the Windows disk and plug it in when I want to use it and not when I don’t.
The idea of just getting a 2nd SATA to put Windows on it is one I have thought of, but would rather avoid it (spend money on Windows? gasp). Does using Clonezilla to copy Windows from one hard disk (PATA) to the other (SATA) trigger any “you must validate” warning bells?
The idea of the drives switching around may help somewhat. That may be why when the computer is booting up faster but unable to find Windows it may be because they are switched somehow and I need to have the Grub entry point to another location. I was running out of time and patience, so I haven’t pursued it yet.
Another idea is to get a USB or Firewire enclosure for the Windows disk and plug it in when I want to use it and not when I don’t.
dragonbite, switching a single hardware item most often does not cause you to need to re-register Windows. Since I change hardware around a lot and dual boot most, I spend some time re-registering Windows. First off, if it has been a long time since your copy of Windows was registered and its not an OEM copy, it most likely will register again just fine. If you have just registered it or it is an OEM version, you may have to do it again. If the online register fails I always pick register by phone as an option and dial the local 1-800 or free phone number if there is one for you to use. You must speak the long number sequence, divided up into six characters groups at a time until finished. You may be asked how many computers you have installed this copy on and the answer should be one. Once satisfied, the computer spits out another very long sequence of letters/numbers, that you must enter onscreen six at a time and then when done you press next and you are finished. There is nothing about the process to be afraid of. If its my copy of Windows, I will reload it as many times as I like, but used for but one computer or what ever the valid number may be. Ever so often I get to talk to someone in India, which is kind of funny for me at least.
As to your copy of Windows wanting to work on a new interface, back in the Windows XP days it would simply blow up. Your best bet was to delete all hard drive interfaces and hard drives, before you do that final shutdown. I might still do that with Windows 7 and further, until it was fully working on the new hard drive, do not get rid of it on the old hard drive, just in case. I have been using a Windows application to copy Windows called HDCLone, but I have not used Clonezilla or dd to do this task for Windows Partitions. I do not think that you will have success running Windows from an External hard drive, as it did not work with XP or Vista, but I guess I have not tried it yet with Windows 7.