Unable to boot!!! Lost partition! Pls help

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#1

Can I install openSUSE KDE from live cd on external hard drive?

I have an external USB3.0 hard drive, with an empty 250GB partition. Can I install the openSUSE 11.3 KDE desktop from the downloadable live cd(which I have burned to a DVD)? My internal hard drive has only 23GB of free space and Windows 7 is installed on it. I want to keep the Win7 and have SUSE as a dual boot option, the latter being installed on my external hard drive. Is this possible? If so, how can I pull this off?

But when I try to install it, and the installer gets to the partitioning part of the installation, it’s very confusing, and I don’t know how to tell it to simply install it to the empty partition on my external hard drive.

Ok, so I selected the empty partition of the external hard drive, installed SUSE there, and it wanted to restart without the CD in the drive. So I took out the CD, and pressed reboot. But it can’t boot from the external hard drive, it sais select proper boot device or insert media, I insert the CD and it just boots from the CD and starts all over again. The worst part is, the other partition of the external hard drive has dissappeared, even though it wasn’t in any way included in the setup proces, and windows can’t access it now. And I had VALUABLE data on it!!!. How can I boot from the hard disk so as to complete the SUSE installation?

Oh, and also, when i try to install opensuse in the booting se tion it says that the sytem might not boOt because the bootloader is installed on a partition that doesn not lie entirely under 128Gb.

#2

Can I install openSUSE KDE from live cd on external hard drive?

I have an external USB3.0 hard drive, with an empty 250GB partition. Can I install the openSUSE 11.3 KDE desktop from the downloadable live cd(which I have burned to a DVD)? My internal hard drive has only 23GB of free space and Windows 7 is installed on it. I want to keep the Win7 and have SUSE as a dual boot option, the latter being installed on my external hard drive. Is this possible? If so, how can I pull this off?

But when I try to install it, and the installer gets to the partitioning part of the installation, it’s very confusing, and I don’t know how to tell it to simply install it to the empty partition on my external hard drive.

Ok, so I selected the empty partition of the external hard drive, installed SUSE there, and it wanted to restart without the CD in the drive. So I took out the CD, and pressed reboot. But it can’t boot from the external hard drive, it sais select proper boot device or insert media, I insert the CD and it just boots from the CD and starts all over again. The worst part is, the other partition of the external hard drive has dissappeared, even though it wasn’t in any way included in the setup proces, and windows can’t access it now. And I had VALUABLE data on it!!!. How can I boot from the hard disk so as to complete the SUSE installation?

Oh, and also, when i try to install opensuse in the booting se tion it says that the sytem might not boOt because the bootloader is installed on a partition that doesn not lie entirely under 128Gb.
There are several issues with trying to install openSUSE 11.3 onto and boot from a USB 3 hard drive.

  1. Unless you can select this USB 3 drive as your BOOT drive in your BIOS, you can not boot openSUSE from this hard drive. As far as I know, no BIOS has been released so far that allows you to select a USB 3 drive for booting.
  2. openSUSE 11.3 has a regression (read bug) that prevents mounting a USB 3 drive in your fstab file.

I boot openSUSE from an external hard drive all of the time, but you can’t do it with a USB 3 drive right now. Also, openSUSE 11.4 comes out in just 12 days hence. If you had BIOS support for USB 3 boot, then it could be done from openSUSE 11.4. If you want to boot from USB 2, I can tell you how to do that if you like.

Thank You,

#3

First of all, thank you for your reply.
This is what I would like: for now, just to be able to access my external hard drive from windows 7, to recover the files that are in the partition on which I did not try to install suse. At the moment, in windows 7, the affore mentioned drive is found, but I can’t access it because “it needs to be formatted” according to windows, while on the other hand, when I run suse from the live cd it shows the partition i want to access as a ntfs-3g partition(isn’t that the type windows wants?). I want to somehow access it in suse(if I can’t do it in windows) in order to extract the data it contains and copy it to a usb flash or smth else. Thanks in advance

#4

First of all, thank you for your reply.
This is what I would like: for now, just to be able to access my external hard drive from windows 7, to recover the files that are in the partition on which I did not try to install suse. At the moment, in windows 7, the affore mentioned drive is found, but I can’t access it because “it needs to be formatted” according to windows, while on the other hand, when I run suse from the live cd it shows the partition i want to access as a ntfs-3g partition(isn’t that the type windows wants?). I want to somehow access it in suse(if I can’t do it in windows) in order to extract the data it contains and copy it to a usb flash or smth else. Thanks in advance
I don’t know how much data is on the USB3 hard drive but if you can see it from openSUSE, you need to copy it to the Windows 7 partition, if it will fit, while running the openSUSE liveCD. Then, reformat the USB3 partition in Windows 7. I do not know what happened but, there is a bug in kernel 2.6.34 that does not properly allow USB3 drives to initialize on startup. The problem was not with openSUSE, but rather the kernel. You might even want to download and make a copy of the openSUSE 11.4 RC2 LiveCD as it includes kernel 2.6.37 which has no problems with USB3. I can not tell you what went wrong, but due to the kernel issue, it does not surprise me. I also own two external USB3 drives and so the issues are known to me.

Thank You,

PS: Did you try plugging in the USB3 drive to a USB2 port? It is supposed to work on a USB2 port as well.

#5

Again, thanks for being so kind,
As for my external hard drive, it has been plugged in a usb2 port the whole time, as my pc doesn’t have a usb3 port.
Here is and image of what suse shows:http://img545.imageshack.us/i/snapshot1v.jpg/
Before I tried to install suse on the external hard drive, it showed a sda1 disk(ntfs-3g(as seen in the image)), a sdb1 partition and a sdb 2 partition, each of arround 250GB, which were the partitions on the external drive, which I had created in Windows. I chose to install suse on stb2, as stb1 had the multimedia data, that i had stored there in windows. When I tried do do that, it said that the sdb2 partition was going to be formatted, and that the installer would create a sbd5 partition for swap(or smth else) and some ext partitions stb6,7 etc, I can’t remember correctly, beacuse I don’t know what it meant. Also before confirming the install, in the bootloader section, appeared a message saying that the system might not boot because the … 128GB9I mentioned it in the first post). Despite that, I proceeded with the install, and when it said reboot, I did, I set the usb external drive as my primary hard drive in BIOS, I told it to boot from that, and took out the CD as instructed. Then it gave the message: "choose proper boot smth, or insert media, so I inserted the disc, rebooted from it, started SUSE from the live cd, and here I am now. The image ist the current state of my hard drives.

#6

Heres the image, the upload failed

http://www.fotografija.com.mk/images/snapshot1j.jpg

#7

IMO, you should copy the files/folders you need while you’re running from the openSUSE LiveCD. Copy to another USB stick if that’s large enough. Otherwise if you setup nfts-3g as or enable read/write you can copy the files to a folder on Win7. However, when you boot back into Win 7 run a defrag to clear up Win 7 fragments.

If your BIOS is recent then you should have “boot other devices” enabled and USB HDD enabled in the boot device order.
Can you post your /etc/fstab ?

#8

The problem is, that the partition from which I want to copy the files, was named sdb1 in suse before i tried to install suse on the sdb2 partition. As you can see now, the sdb1, and the sdb2 partition for that matter, don’t show up in suse anymore.

Otherwise, that was my plan, to copy the needed files to a usb etc. But the partition shown above as sda1 is the one on which windows is installed, and I can boot from that, and run win, no problem. Trouble is that the external hard drive which contained the sdb1 and sdb2 partitions is no longer accessible through windows, and no longer show up in suse. The sbd7 partition you see in the image, is what i believe to be the one that used to be sdb2, as it contains the installed files from suse. The sdb1, which I changed in no way whatsoever, has dissapeared from this universe apparently:) Question is, can I somehow recover it, or format the disk in win7 and use some un-delete softwere to receover the lost files afterwards.

P.S: The external hard disk is now recognised in win7 as a drive that needs to be formatted, and not two separate partitions, one left as a ntfs, and the other with suse on it, as it should be
P.P.S: The BIOS thing: In the hard drves section it showed my internal and external drives, and i selected the usb one as primary, and set that one as the first boot option-still no luck. The “removable devices” menu, appeared in one attempt, but it does not anymore.

#9

I don’t know what are /dev/stb1 or stb2? Can you post output from fdisk -l ?
I have trouble following what partition is what or where, least of all its content.

#10

What is the exact terminal command for this? I tried but fdisk -l gives no output

#11

to run fdisk, you must have root access. In terminal type:

su -
password:
fdisk -l

You enter the root user password in response to the word password: and you do not type the word password as it will display this for you. Copy and paste the output of fdisk -l for us to see here.

Thank You,

#12

What is the exact terminal command for this? I tried but fdisk -l gives no output
In case you do not know the ‘-l’ is a small ‘L’ not the number 1.

#13

Do you mean how to get a terminal?
on a blank area of the desktop, right click and select “Open in Terminal”.

Or from the menu, Applications | System | Terminal and select a terminal.
Then enter the fdisk -l command.

Pls highlight all of the output and copy. Open SUSE Paste paste output, fill author, title and create. Copy the http:// address into your reply post.

#14

Ok guys, thanks a million for your support. Here is how things are right now:
I fornatted the external hard drive in win7, but first I managed to extract all my files with a recovery utility. Now the external hard drive is split into two partitions, 230gb each. It is plugged into a usb 2.0 port. I want to install opensuse on one of the partitions. Can you put together a short step-by-step on how to do it? Thanks again

#15

I am not sure a step by step guide exists on how to load and boot openSUSE from an external hard drive. So, here is what I put together for you.

Each hard drive can have up to four PRIMARY partitions, any of which could be marked active and bootable. No matter what you might hear, only one of the first four primary partitions can be booted from. That means you can boot from Primary partitions 1, 2, 3 or 4 and that is all. In order to boot openSUSE, you must load openSUSE and the grub boot loader into one of the first four partitions. Or, your second choice is to load the grub boot loader into the MBR (Master Boot Record) at the start of the disk. The MBR can be blank, like a new disk, it can contain a Windows partition booting code or generic booting code to boot the active partition 1, 2, 3, or 4. Or, as stated before, it can contain the grub boot loader. Why load grub into the MBR then? You do this so that you can “boot” openSUSE from a logical partition, numbered 5 or higher, which is not normally possible. In order to have more than four partitions, one of them (and only one can be assigned as extended) must be a extended partition. It is called an Extended Primary Partition, a container partition, it can be any one of the first four and it can contain one or more logical partitions within. Anytime you see partition numbers 5, 6 or higher for instance, they can only occur inside of the one and only Extended Primary partition you could have.

What does openSUSE want as far as partitions? It needs at minimum a SWAP partition and a “/” partition where all of your software is loaded. Further, it is recommended you create a separate /home partition, which makes it easier to upgrade or reload openSUSE without losing all of your settings. So, that is three more partitions you must add to what you have now. What must you do to load and boot openSUSE from an external hard drive? Number one, you must be able to select your external hard drive as the boot drive in your BIOS setup. Number two, you need to make sure that the external hard drive, perhaps /dev/sdb, is listed as the first hard drive in your grub device.map file and listed as drive hd0. I always suggest that you do not load grub into the MBR, but rather into the openSUSE “/” root primary partition which means a primary number of 1, 2, 3 or 4. If number one is used, then that will be out. You will mark the openSUSE partition as active for booting and finally you must load generic booting code into the MBR so that it will boot the openSUSE partition. I suggest a partition like this:

  1. /dev/sdb, Load MBR with generic booting code
  2. /dev/sdb1, Primary NTFS Partition for Windows
  3. /dev/sdb2, Primary SWAP (4 GB)
  4. /dev/sdb3, Primary EXT4 “/” openSUSE Partition Marked Active for booting (80-120 GB)
  5. /dev/sdb4, Primary EXT4 “/home” Your main home directory (Rest of the disk)

This is not simple or even a step by step guide, but the gist of what needs to be done. Read through this several times if need be and then ask any questions that you like.

Thank You,

#16

Thanks again, the support here is incredible.
I CAN select the external hard drive as primary in the boot settings. However, I have a question: could I simply format the disk now, return it to it’s default, out-of-the-box state, and let the opensuse installer do what it thinks is best? Will it leave me free space, so that later, when I boot from win7, I can create a windows partition from that free space, to contain mu multimedia files?

Also, a bit offtopic, I’m having a dillema: Should I install Ubuntu or openSUSE? I have downloaded the live cd for both, and have used ubuntu before, and I have also used SUSE as part of my programming classes at my university. So the question is: which OS, and which desktop(KDE or GNOME)?

#17

You’re giving us a headache. Windows doesn’t like extending partitions, if you resize an partition later to create free space for Windows that partition will be added as a D: drive, etc. Its better to allocate more space for Windows 7 than openSUSE if you plan on doing video work in Windows 7, from a programs installation and videos storage view point. 230Gb seems small for Windows 7 plus video/multimedia editing.

Thanks to NTFS Linux developers, ntfs-3g can read and write to Windows FAT, FAT32 and NTFS files from Linux (openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Knoppix). Using EXT2FSD for Windows, Windows can read and write to a Linux partition from Windows 7. This provides you with a method to store data in either partition.**
Caveat for EXT2FSD,** I tend to limit direct r/w across systems to small and medium files, wait until I’m running on the host system then copy large (DVD iso 4.7Gb) files from the target system. On openSUSE, copy dvd.iso from Windows 7 partition to openSUSE or running Windows 7 and copy dvd.iso from openSUSE partition.

Most Linux distros work well and its a matter of taste. OpenSUSE tries to avoid proprietary licensing so 3rd party apps are avail, Ubuntu geared for plug and play.

AFAIK, returning the external drive to original state is ok. I’d avoid LVM partitioning or allowing openSUSE to partition, use edit partitioning.

#18

If you take the defualts it will not leave space. On a blank drive it will create swap / (root) and home partitions with swap being 2x memory, root about 30 gig (depending on size of drive) and the rest as home. If you want to reserve space or create a partition for a NTFS file system you need to tell it.

What I would do is use windows to create and format 1 partition the size you want, leaving the rest unpartitioned. Then let the installer do it’s thing. But always check what it proposes don’t blindly click continue like is done in Windows. Note that since you are installing to an external drive be sure that it is first in the boot sequence in the BIOS also be sure that the proposed scheme puts grub in the MBR of the target drive not on the internal one. This way If you unplug the external it will boot to Windows directly and with it plugged it will boot to grub and give you a choice which you want to boot. note agiain that it may require a small edit to boot to the internal from the external if so let us know it is an easy fix.

#19

Ok, so I deleted the first partition on my external hard drive, and left the second empty for my files from win7. I installed suse on the unallocated space, and I put the bootloader with master checked and custom partition checked, in sbd2, which is where I installed suse.
The system won’t boot from the hard drive, even though I set it as a primary boot device.

Here is the fdisk output:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
1 heads, 1 sectors/track, 312581808 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = cylinders of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x68c48a27

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2 312581808 156290903+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107860480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6780d680

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 30401 60802 244192256 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 1 30401 244191232 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 1 262 2102272 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6 263 2873 20971520 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7 2874 30401 221114368 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

#20

There are only two ways this will boot. Ether you MUST load grub into the MBR OR your must load grub into /dev/sdb2, even though /dev/sdb2 is not the openSUSE “/” root partition and mark it active for booting.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 30401 60802 244192256 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 1 30401 244191232 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 1 262 2102272 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6 263 2873 20971520 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7 2874 30401 221114368 83 Linux

So where did you install the grub boot loader? Did you make /dev/sdb the first drive in your device.map file? You may need to boot from a LiveCD to look at such issues while running Linux.

Thank You,