I’ve just bought a new 1TB WD Velociraptor disk and plugged it into my The computer is a Dell Precision T1600. I want to install openSuSE 12.2 on the new disk without involving or touching my old disk, which has only a few hundred hours left according to smart but I still want to be able to access it for some time.
I changed the boot order in BIOS and placed my new disk before the old one and have tried several times to install openSuSE on it.
On my first attempt I pretty much accepted the installers suggestions with minor changes to partition sizes and placing swap only on an sdb partition (my new drive). The installation went fine until it was time for reboot. Apparently it couldn’t boot from sdb so it fell back to sda (the old drive) and booted my old suse installation.
I then started over but asked the installer to use GRUB instead of GRUB2. Got some scary warnings from the installer about not being able to determine disk order. The result was the same as above though.
On my third attempt I changed the order of sda and sdb in the boot configuration to sdb, sda and checked MBR. The summary hinted that it would install an MBR on sdb. Still it wouldn’t boot.
Running fdisk -l /dev/sdb from my old system gives the following output:
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 1953525167 976762583+ ee GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Something must be seriously wrong here but I have no idea what.
The suse installer created the partitions. Fdisk apparently can’t show them but there are five of them: swap, /boot, /, /home and /extra,
The file systems are fat on boot, swap on swap and ext3 on the rest.
Just realized that I didn’t create any extended partition. Could that be the problem, that there are more than four primary partitions? But wouldn’t the installer refuse this? I’ll try again with an extended.
There are a number of ways to change to an msdos partition table (as your sda disk is), if you use Gparted click on Device > Create Partition Table > Advanced > msdos > apply.
You can then setup partitions or allow the installer to set them up for you.
On 2012-11-16 20:16, gugrim wrote:
> No idea really, I just let the suse installer do it’s work. Didn’t
> change anything other than partition sizes.
Me, I would restart the installation making sure that it uses
traditional partitioning. For the moment, till the tools mature it is
easier to do and get it working.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
That’s the hint I needed! There was a setting in BIOS where I could switch UEFI mode on. Hadn’t looked for it since I have just learned (in this thread) that there is such a thing! Suse 12.2 is now installed!
Still wonder why the suse installer suggested GRUB2-EFI boot when it wasn’t available, but perhaps it didn’t know.
That’s the hint I needed! There was a setting in BIOS where I could switch UEFI mode on. Hadn’t looked for it since I have just learned (in this thread) that there is such a thing! Suse 12.2 is now installed!
The reason no one recommended switching from BIOS to UEFI ‘mode’ is that there is no need on your system for it, example- disks over 2TB, plus you stated you had no need for GPT, and for someone used to BIOS and MBR (msdos) disks, switching to a combination of UEFI with MBR and GPT disks potentially adds unnecessary complications.
Still wonder why the suse installer suggested GRUB2-EFI boot when it wasn’t available, but perhaps it didn’t know.
To give a explanation for this and the reason the installer chose GPT for your disk, UEFI is a replacement for BIOS, what you most likely had was actually UEFI in BIOS mode.
In your case the installer appears to have recognized UEFI, but not the mode and installed accordingly.