Old Leap disk will not boot. How to boot into the OS again to recover data?

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hello, my old computer recently died unexpectedly and I have since got a new one, and put tumbleweed on it. It’s working awesome, but the problem I’m having is that my old drive wont show up in my BIOS boot menu. I want to boot into the old OS (leap 42.3) and get data and wrap some stuff up. I am wondering how I would go about troubleshooting it not booting and what sorts of things i need to do. I can provide more info if necessary.

Here is my fdisk -l (old disk i want to recover is /dev/sda):


Disk /dev/sda: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk model: ST4000DM004-2CV1
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 00CB8FD1-EFFA-42E4-9572-7E997E7BC680

Device     Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sda1   2048      18431      16384    8M BIOS boot
/dev/sda2  18432 7814037134 7814018703  3.6T Linux LVM


Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 1.82 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB            
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: E48385DF-6E01-406B-8B84-15F9DC3FF1D4

Device           Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1    2048    1050623    1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 1050624 3907029134 3905978511  1.8T Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 1.82 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB            
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: D7B0C83B-D807-44D5-ABF5-E6C5BD789CE9

Device         Start       End   Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nvme1n1p1  2048 131520511 131518464 62.7G Linux swap


Disk /dev/mapper/cr_root: 1.82 TiB, 1999858900480 bytes, 3905974415 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/cr_swap: 62.71 GiB, 67335356416 bytes, 131514368 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/system-swap: 15.07 GiB, 16177430528 bytes, 31596544 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 /dev/mapper/system-root: 3.62 TiB, 3984597188608 bytes, 7782416384 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

and an lsblk:


NAME            MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS
sda               8:0    0  3.6T  0 disk  
├─sda1            8:1    0    8M  0 part  
└─sda2            8:2    0  3.6T  0 part  
  ├─system-swap 254:2    0 15.1G  0 lvm   
  └─system-root 254:3    0  3.6T  0 lvm   
nvme0n1         259:0    0  1.8T  0 disk  
├─nvme0n1p1     259:1    0  512M  0 part  /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2     259:2    0  1.8T  0 part  
  └─cr_root     254:0    0  1.8T  0 crypt /var
                                          /usr/local
                                          /srv
                                          /root
                                          /opt
                                          /home
                                          /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi
                                          /boot/grub2/i386-pc
                                          /.snapshots
                                          /
nvme1n1         259:3    0  1.8T  0 disk  
└─nvme1n1p1     259:4    0 62.7G  0 part  
  └─cr_swap     254:1    0 62.7G  0 crypt [SWAP]

I am here and eager to provide more info as needed. Thank you!

#2

I am having to do some guessing here.

As to why your BIOS does not want to boot that disk – hard to know. Perhaps your new computer is set to use UEFI booting, and the old system was set for MBR booting. But that’s just a guess. You might try setting the BIOS for MBR booting, and see if you can boot it then. But that may mean that you cannot boot the new system.

Some more guessing.

Your disk ("/dev/sda") contains an LVM.

My first guess is that it is an encrypted LVM. I am guessing that, because you seem to be using encryption. Inside that encrypted LVM, you are probably using the name “system”. I’m guessing that because it is the default for an openSUSE setup. But that would mean that your old LVM and new LVM are using the same name internally. I have no idea what happens in that case, but I presume that it causes problems.

If I were in that situation, I would try booting from live media (I would probably use the live Tumbleweed, written to a USB device). From that live system, I would run “cryptsetup” to open up that presumed-encrypted LVM and find out more about what is there. It might even be possible to change the name to something other than “system” without destroying the data, but I have never attempted that. The point of using live media for this, is that it avoids any name conflict for the LVMs.

Maybe take my reply as a hint about how you can find more information about what you have.

#3

You do not need to boot into the old OS to get data from it. Just mount and copy whatever data is necessary. I do not know what “wrap up” means, so I cannot offer a suggestion.

#4

You are correct. I assumed that my new motherboard was able to use both, but it can only boot uefi. I was able to get into rescue mode booting from grub on the new os, and get a lot of the data i needed off. I think i just need a motherboard that can boot bios and i should be able to get back in easily. The old disk was not encrypted either. I mounted it in my new install and was able to get to alot of data besides my home folder.