Check the boot order in the bios. My asus m/board changed the boot order from the plugged order when I swapped one disk for another. Even though the new disk was connected to the same port as the original it put the new disk at the end of the boot list. Starting your system with the desired boot disk missing (no power, not properly plugged in) may result in the same sort of problem.
All right. First you told us that you have 2 hard disks. Finally you admitted that one of these is SATA an the other one IDE. This is nowadays - because of the way device names are generated at boot time by a daemon called “udev” - an unfortunate combination. What appears to be sda can become sdb at the next boot and vice versa. Although you can live with it, it’s often confusing for newbies and advanced users too. This behaviour is not specific to openSUSE. All recent Linuxes use udev and have the same issue. It is not uncommon that right after installing, the order of drives has been modified when you reboot.
There is not much you can do. Someone suggested to change the orders modules are loaded an rebuild the ram disk … The golden rule is to NEVER use device names in Grub menu and /etc/fstab. But the default is to use other notations (like mount disk/by-id, disk/by-uuid symlinks or UUIDs) on openSUSE, Ubuntu and most distros.
I imagine this explanation is much more complicated that what you were expecting. The simplest thing is to avoid mixing IDE and SATA drives (tha’ts what I personnally do, although I know how to handle the situation).
In most cases it does, but the users are confused because the device names have changed. Stop thinking in term of device names (sda, sdb, etc). Get another SATA disk and duplicate your IDE disk to it if you can afford it.
This topic has been widely discussed in several threads. Here are some of the latests ones:
I read the first article that you mentioned and I did a little looking around and this is what I saw:
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00014e3d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 60800 488375968+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e105a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 2611 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 2612 60801 467411175 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdd: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x683bf820
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 1 128 1028128+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdd2 * 129 9729 77120032+ 83 Linux
The section “INITRD_MODULES” in the Yast Module called “/etc/sysconfig editor” says:
sata_nv pata_amd ata_generic amd74xx ide_pci_generic jbd2 mbcache ext4
> First you told us that you have 2 hard disks. Finally you admitted that one of these is SATA an the other one IDE.
Well, I'm not an expert and I forgot about that, sorry. The older IDE has the old SuSE 10.0 (and is not bootable because there's no graphics card driver for it to run my new graphics card) but I use it now for storage (lots of artwork and music on it) and one of my 2 SATA hd's is used just for storage (no OS on it -- just files) while the 2nd SATA is the one with my SuSE 11.2 system (which had been booting just fine with the previous motherboard setup.)
I guess it wouldn't hurt to try as vindevienne had said, now that I have the driver installed for the new graphics card. I'll report back about the results.vindevienne wrote:
> Check the boot order in the bios. My asus m/board changed the boot order
> from the plugged order when I swapped one disk for another. Even though
> the new disk was connected to the same port as the original it put the
> new disk at the end of the boot list. Starting your system with the
> desired boot disk missing (no power, not properly plugged in) may result
> in the same sort of problem.
Yes, you may be able to swap the boot order in the BIOS. Alternatively,
you can just reinstall grub and that should fix things up.
re-install Grub? YaST would handle it all correctly? Would I have to uninstall it first before re-installing? That doesn’t sound so good.
If it is already checked off and saying that it’s already installed, how would I get it to re-install?
I’m still wondering about the system repair tool that we used. The IDE drive is set as Master and is plugged into the m/board the exact same way as with the previous m/board. I’m wondering if the repair tool put something on that drive for booting the system?
btw, my husband and I just tried changing the order # of the drives in the bios but there wasn’t any place that would allow that. It just had for device priority: Hard Drive, CD rom, or Removable. So in another part of the bios my husband disabled the IDE drive (trying to force it to look to the SATA drive to boot from) and when we tried to boot up the system, it just went in circles, it couldn’t find a bootloader.
So, we put it all back the way it was, with the IDE drive enabled and so now I still have to boot as I said before: When starting up, hit f8, choose the IDE drive as the drive to boot from, hit Enter, and SuSE 11.2 comes up and seems to operate normally.
gymnart wrote:
> re-install Grub? YaST would handle it all correctly? Would I have to
> uninstall it first before re-installing? That doesn’t sound so good.
> If it is already checked off and saying that it’s already installed,
> how would I get it to re-install?
You don’t need to remove grub first. I have a confession to make here,
which is that I find opensuse’s grub installation so cantankerous that I
use Ubuntu to set up my boot arrangements. It generally just gets
everything right, in my experience.
I also haven’t tried 11.4 yet, so I don’t even know exactly what
facilities are available. But if YaST still has a Boot Loader section,
with a Boot Loader Installation tab, then you should be able to use that
to reinstall grub. Hopefully somebody else can tell you exactly which
options to choose.
> I’m still wondering about the system repair tool that we used. The IDE
> drive is set as Master and is plugged into the m/board the exact same
> way as with the previous m/board. I’m wondering if the repair tool put
> something on that drive for booting the system?
Quite possible. Note that how the previous motherboard was set up
doesn’t have much relevance. With both different hardware and different
kernel version there’s a good chance things will be different. Ubuntu
and opensuse number the disks differently on several of my machines, for
example.
> btw, my husband and I just tried changing the order # of the drives in
> the bios but there wasn’t any place that would allow that. It just had
> for device priority: Hard Drive, CD rom, or Removable. So in another
> part of the bios my husband disabled the IDE drive (trying to force it
> to look to the SATA drive to boot from) and when we tried to boot up the
> system, it just went in circles, it couldn’t find a bootloader.
Do you mean that it didn’t find the SATA drive or that it found it but
it didn’t contain grub?
> So, we put it all back the way it was, with the IDE drive enabled and
> so now I still have to boot as I said before: When starting up, hit f8,
> choose the IDE drive as the drive to boot from, hit Enter, and SuSE 11.2
> comes up and seems to operate normally.
Worse things happen at sea 
Do you mean that it didn’t find the SATA drive or that it found it but
it didn’t contain grub?
Well I don’t know what is happening here but I know that the SATA drive does have grub. I’ve seen it in the directory. I’m pretty sure that it found the SATA drive but I’m just assuming that. You know how the normal boot screen looks (with the green background), well when it went in circles, it had the text along with the option to boot either from the normal kernel (I hope that it’s the latest kernel that was installed from the security updates!) or safe mode. But the screen’s background was black and the choices were in white text. It just kept trying to boot but only coming back to that same screen.
What is odd is that with the previous m/board, I’ve had zypper set up to show the previous kernels to boot up to (as described in this forum Keyboard & mouse freezes ) so that if something went wrong after the kernel security update, I would be able to boot into a previous one that worked and now, I’ve noticed that none of them show up, only one along with a failsafe one.
I guess I might just live with it the way it is now, having to hit F8 each time and selecting the IDE drive until I back up all my photos/artwork/documents and maybe go for the latest release, I dunno.
You have indeed got 3 hard drives according to the system. 2 500Gb’s and 1 80Gb. The little * indicates 2 hard drives are bootable. 1 of the 500Gb’s is bootable and the 80Gb. My guess is the first SATA has got your openSUSE 11.2 GRUB on it and the 80Gb IDE has either the old GRUB on there from your openSUSE 10.0 install or a new GRUB on there done by the system repair tool you used.
What repair tool did you use? Unless you are seeing the default OpenSUSE Bootloader (the one with a openSUSE logo) you are booting from a different Grub installation. It is very possible to have GRUB on both hard drives (I have the same. 1 from Linux Mint 10 and one from OpenSUSE 11.4). In this case it depends what hard drive gets checked for a bootable system first. You should force the motherboard to load up your first SATA drive. Refer to your motherboard manual on how to change the hard drive order. If it doesn’t work the first time swap the 2 sata drives around in the order of boot devices. It may be a bit difficult to tell the difference from the BIOS.
What brand and model of motherboard is it out of curiosity?
If you want to keep previous kernels, uncomment the following line in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf (remove the ‘#’):
# multiversion = provides:multiversion(kernel)
That way you can boot an older kernel if something goes wrong after a kernel update. To list the kernels currently installed, type:
find /boot -type f -name "vmlinuz*"
Adding other kernels entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst is uncomplicated with root privileges and some copy/pasting and imagination.
Installing Grub on the drive you like can be achieved with correct BIOS settings and adequate device map: the file /boot/grub/device.map which maps BIOS drives to hard disks and that you might have to edit/create. This file only plays a role when you install/reinstall Grub from the grub shell (the command “grub”). I don’t know if YaST uses it - it might or might not.
Mixing SATA and IDE drives is not a problem either, but it adds a layer of complexity. Therefore I do not recommend it. Remember never to use device names, neither in Grub menu, nor in /etc/fstab.
The result of
find /boot -type f -name “vmlinuz*” :
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.2-desktop
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.6-desktop
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.4-desktop
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.1-desktop
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop
Yes, I had done what you said about keeping previous kernels, so that’s why several are listed.
The motherboard is ASUS P5N-D
the 80Gb IDE has either the old GRUB on there from your openSUSE 10.0 install or a new GRUB on there done by the system repair tool you used.
This is exactly what I suspect has happened. The 80Gb’s GRUB might have been written over by the system repair tool and that’s the one that is being looked to when booting.
The repair tool was from the SuSE 11.2 install disk. There is an option to repair the system on there.
You should force the motherboard to load up your first SATA drive.
That’s what we did when my husband disabled the IDE drive from within the bios and then the computer just couldn’t boot. It kept going in circles.
As far as using the device names, I never touched that. Everything was done either by YaST or from following instructions from this forum.
From within /boot/grub/ I see device.map.old dated 6/17/10 and menu.1st.old dated 1/4/11 and I have device.map dated 3/17/11 and menu.1st dated 3/17/11 .
How do you take a look at the contents of these files without ruining anything? If any edits are made and something does not work as planned, (such as not being able to boot up) how would you be able to get back into your system?
Adding other kernels entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst is uncomplicated with root privileges and some copy/pasting and imagination.
I have no imagination and I have no background in computerese (computer commands). That’s why I came to you experienced experts for help. 
In order to boot from the first drive (whichever has the boot priority in the BIOS), you need:
- either a bootmanager (like Grub) in the MBR (first sector of the disk)
- or a generic MBR (= no bootmanager) and an active primary partition (the one of four which has the bootflag). This could be the Windows C: drive or a linux partition or even the extended partition with Grub installed in its bootsector (first sector of the partition). As you can see from this explanation, you can have Grub in several locations, in MBR and in the Linux root partition. This is also a good practice. Of course the one in MBR has precedence.
You can install Grub (the bootloader in bootsector is called ‘stage1’) anytime and anywhere (except in Windows and swap partitions) by booting form a live CD containing legacy GRUB (and not Grub2. This is important!) and running the Grub shell, as explained in this Howto (Re-Install Grub Quickly with Parted Magic) and in many posts.
Hmmm … Unfortunately different helpers have different views on that problem. I can just tell you not to use device names (this is particularly true in your case)… but what else can I say?
So you have two device.map. That’s indeed interesting!
You can use the command cat. It prints the content of a file to standard output (your terminal). If the file is too long, use the command more. You will be often asked to post the output of this command to provide helpers with the infos they need about your system. Common examples are:
cat /etc/fstab
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
cat /boot/grub/device.map
etc
Hmmm … There are too many cases and too many answers. You can press escape at the Grub screen to leave the graphical boot menu and enter the Grub shell, provided you know what to type in there. If you have several Linux versions or distros, you can boot one to repare a file on another one by mounting its root partition under the running system. In the worst case you can use a live CD. I cannot tell you anything about reparing tools. I don’t know what they do (and don’t use them for that reason). Before editing a file, always make a copy using your initials as extention (that way you’ll know that you modified it and not some other system or repairing tool). For example, before modyfing /boot/grub/menu.lst, do this:
cd /boot/grub
cp menu.lst menu.lst.gym
Got it? If something goes wrong, you’ll find the original configuration in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst.gym and you would get it back with:
cd /boot/grub
cp menu.lst.gym menu.lst
cd means “change directory”, meaning that any command you type are relative to that directory. This is the same as in Windows (if you ever did that in a previous life).
Well, this is the result of cat /boot/grub/menu.lst.old
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Tue Jan 4 10:58:23 EST 2011
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,0)/boot/message
##YaST - activate
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.6
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.6-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 resume=/dev/disk/ by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.6-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.6
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.6-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.6-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.4
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.4-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.4-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.4
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.4-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.4-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.2
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.2-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.2
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.2-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.1
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.1-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.1-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.14-0.1
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.14-0.1-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.14-0.1-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.12-0.2
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.12-0.2
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: SUSE LINUX 10.0 (/dev/sda2)###
title SUSE LINUX 10.0 (/dev/sda2)
rootnoverify (hd2,1)
chainloader +1
And this is the most recent one ( cat /boot/grub/menu.lst )
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Mar 17 17:37:08 EDT 2011
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd2,0)/boot/message
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX
root (hd2,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 repair=1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX
root (hd2,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd
cat /boot/grub/device.map.old
(hd2) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925
(hd0) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VM3S4B6
(hd1) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ
and the latest one:
cat /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925
(hd1) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VM3S4B6
(hd2) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ
Can the menu.1st.old simply replace the new menu.1st? Or is that too risky? I wouldn’t have to worry about the device.map would I?
I do have Puppy4 and I know that it can mount and view the files on my system so I guess I’d have to use that to edit the menu.1st again if necessary.
It wont’ work. Actually none of these menu.lst has a grub menu on the first hard drive (hd0). We need to know what is on the hard disk which appears as hd0 in the latest device.map and what you intend to do with it.
Yes and no. The file is not used, meaning you can delete it or change it. But it still reflects the reality of the device mapping which was used last time Grub was installed. So you can not just ignore it.
Correct.
But look what I found in your post #20](http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/hardware/455951-new-motherboard-2.html#post2308268)
You have something like that (only the most relevant infos):
43: IDE 300.0: 10600 Disk
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_serial_ST3500418AS_9VM3S4B6
Driver: "sata_nv", "sd"
Driver Modules: "sata_nv"
Device File: **/dev/sda **
Device Files: /dev/sda, /dev/block/8:0, /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VM3S4B6, /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST3500418AS_9VM3S4B6, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-0:0:0:0, /dev/disk/by-id/edd-int13_dev81
BIOS id: 0x81
Attached to: #29 (IDE interface)
45: IDE 400.0: 10600 Disk
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_serial_ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ
Driver: "sata_nv", "sd"
Driver Modules: "sata_nv"
Device File: **/dev/sdc**
Device Files: /dev/sdc, /dev/block/8:32, /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ, /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-1:0:0:0, /dev/disk/by-id/edd-int13_dev82
BIOS id: 0x82
Attached to: #29 (IDE interface)
46: IDE 500.0: 10600 Disk
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/storage_serial_WDC_WD800JB_00CRA1_WD_WMA8E3520925
Driver: "pata_amd", "sd"
Driver Modules: "pata_amd"
Device File: **/dev/sdd**
Device Files: /dev/sdd, /dev/block/8:48, /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925, /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD800JB-00CWD-WMA8E3520925, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0d.0-scsi-0:0:0:0, /dev/disk/by-id/edd-int13_dev80
BIOS id: 0x80
Attached to: #27 (IDE interface)
The numbers 0x80, 0x81, 0x82 describe the 1st, 2nd and 3rd BIOS drives. Funny is that all drives are attached to the IDE interface, which means that your BIOS storage configuration is not set to use AHCI mode but some kind of legacy IDE emulation mode. I don’t know if you chose that or if you didn’t have the choice because of the mixing of IDE and SATA drives. And this is different on different mainboards.
Here’s an example of a SATA drive in AHCI mode:
28: IDE 100.0: 10600 Disk
SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host1/target1:0:0/1:0:0:0
Driver: "ahci", "sd"
Driver Modules: "ahci"
Device File: /dev/sdb
Device Files: /dev/sdb, /dev/block/8:16, /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5000AAKS-00A7B0_WD-WMASY6644220, /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD5000AAKS-_WD-WMASY6644220, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:0:0, /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x50014ee0abc70c92
BIOS id: 0x80
Attached to: #19 (SATA controller)
You see that my SATA drive is attached to the SATA controller while yours appears to be on the IDE interface.
So this is tricky. Your IDE drive is the boot drive (0x80) and doesn’t boot … or what does it exactly? If you remove that drive completely, your menu.lst.old will be wrong until you replace hd1 with hd0 everywhere in that file an reinstall Grub using device.map.old, after removing hd2 from this file (and of course renaming menu.lst.old in menu.lst and device.map.old in device.map.) But before you do that … tell us what you intend to do exactly.
If you can follow me, I have to disagree with what you stated before: you do have imagination.
Sorry to say it again, but life is easier if you can avoid mixing SATA and IDE drives (and I’m not an easy guy if you’re asking around).
Well … it would work if you have/had some bootable other Linux on your IDE drive, like a minimal Ubuntu. There is a chance that you would be able to boot openSUSE right after an Ubuntu installalation ont this drive without the need of changing anything (except renaming menu.lst.old in menu.lst) before. We should have a look at /etc/fstab though.
Don’t take it as an advice. It is just a possibility. The advice is to think about a setup which doesn’t involve SATA and IDE disks.
ok, this is the result of cat /etc/fstab:
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part1 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ-part2 /home ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VM3S4B6-part1 /local reiserfs defaults 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925-part2 /oldsuse10 reiserfs defaults 1 2
The IDE (WDC_WD800JB-00CRA1_WD-WMA8E3520925) drive has my old SuSE 10.0 which is now used for storage (my older artworks & photos)
/local is just storage (the entire drive is artworks and photos)
and as you can see, the part 1 (/) of the other SATA drive is SuSE 11.2 and the part 2 (/home) is a partition of my new stuff. I set SuSE 11.2 up this way hoping that when it came time to upgrade, I’d be able to do that without losing all my stuff. (A knowledgeable friend told me that is a good way to set it up.)
Right now, I am so confused and I’m just about ready to give up. 
All the mapping is wrong and that is so strange to me.
I looks to me like the drive that ends with SCCQ is the one with SuSE 11.2 and that’s the one I want to boot from.
P.S. I noticed that with my previous motherboard, my system was booting from: (hd1,0) (which was: (hd1) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ ) and it had been working just fine before this motherboard switch.
And now that same hd1 drive has been assigned as: (hd2) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_9VMDSCCQ and the system is trying to boot from it: (hd2,0)/boot/message but it just doesn’t seem to know that it has Grub on it.
your BIOS storage configuration is not set to use AHCI mode but some kind of legacy IDE emulation mode. I don’t know if you chose that or if you didn’t have the choice because of the mixing of IDE and SATA drives.
I don’t think that we had a choice, at least I don’t remember if there was any. We’ve tried to keep the set up the same as it was with the previous motherboard.
I don’t understand the trouble. When we installed 11.2, it set stuff up automatically and we just told it what we wanted (to keep the SuSE 10.0 drive as storage and to have the other SATA drive as storage too) and it all just worked right the first time it booted. Why do these silly motherboards have to cause these confusing changes?
Again, try doing it with Windows. They are not confusing changes. What suprises me is that you keep thinking that replacing a motherboard in a computer is a simple and easy thing for the software to deal with. It is not. Your old motherboard put the hard drives in a different order. Have you been able to create the same order in the new one? If you had than this would not be a problem.
Changing a video card is one thing but changing a motherboard without expecting problems is a whole other ballgame!
This is because you did not do a major change in hard ware. A new OpenSUSE installation would be the same. I would make a backup of my data and just install it all again so you have only 1 OpenSUSE version using 3 hard drives. And all should be well!