ttoolin
August 16th, 2009, 01:44 PM
Hi folks-
I have a hard drive configuration problem:
I have ubuntu installed on an old Dell box (P3, circa 1999), which came with a 6 gig hard drive. When it became obvious that within a fairly short period of use, that I was going to fill it up, I bought a 20 gig hard drive, and after much diving into the docs, managed to format it, transfer the data from the 6 gig to the 20 gig, and had the partition manager make the 20 gig hard drive the boot drive.
Success. I then pulled the plug on the 6 gig drive, keeping it intact, in case the new drive (which I bought used) crashed.
Now I'm ready to use the 6 gig drive as a second drive.
I changed the jumper on it to be a slave. I changed the IDE cable so that the 6 gig drive is plugged into the slave plug of the IDE cable where the 20 gig drive is, and plugged the other into my CD drive.
I boot up the machine, and it booted off of the 6 gig drive (old stuff was on the desktop). I go into the partition manager, which shows the 20 gig drive with the boot flag on, and shows no such flag on the 6 gig. I try to format, repartition, etc, etc on the 6 gig drive, and the system won't let me (probably because it is the drive the system just booted onto).
I then realize that my CD drive disappeared. This is likely an easy fix. I think I just need to change its jumper to 'master'. I could have, however, ended up with some sort of convoluted cable arrangement. If so, it's likely still an easy fix.
It is strange, though, that the system sees both hard drives just fine, it knows which one I prefer to be a boot drive (and also which one that I don't), the master and slave jumpers are right, and yet, it boots up on the wrong one.
Is there an easy answer to this? I know I can disconnect the 20 gig drive, boot up on a windows startup floppy and format the 6 gig, and then work from there. Or is it that the windows startup floppy *is* the easy answer.
Thanks in advance. BTW - I am a happy ubuntu user, and I'm ready to graduate from my Dell 'let's try linux out' machine. I may keep a windows box around for my family, but I see no reason to not load ubuntu into any machine I am personally using. Ubuntu presents me with challenges, but I enjoy working through them (most of the time, anyway). Some of the challenges are surely the age and speed of the machine I've installed ubuntu in to.
terry
I have a hard drive configuration problem:
I have ubuntu installed on an old Dell box (P3, circa 1999), which came with a 6 gig hard drive. When it became obvious that within a fairly short period of use, that I was going to fill it up, I bought a 20 gig hard drive, and after much diving into the docs, managed to format it, transfer the data from the 6 gig to the 20 gig, and had the partition manager make the 20 gig hard drive the boot drive.
Success. I then pulled the plug on the 6 gig drive, keeping it intact, in case the new drive (which I bought used) crashed.
Now I'm ready to use the 6 gig drive as a second drive.
I changed the jumper on it to be a slave. I changed the IDE cable so that the 6 gig drive is plugged into the slave plug of the IDE cable where the 20 gig drive is, and plugged the other into my CD drive.
I boot up the machine, and it booted off of the 6 gig drive (old stuff was on the desktop). I go into the partition manager, which shows the 20 gig drive with the boot flag on, and shows no such flag on the 6 gig. I try to format, repartition, etc, etc on the 6 gig drive, and the system won't let me (probably because it is the drive the system just booted onto).
I then realize that my CD drive disappeared. This is likely an easy fix. I think I just need to change its jumper to 'master'. I could have, however, ended up with some sort of convoluted cable arrangement. If so, it's likely still an easy fix.
It is strange, though, that the system sees both hard drives just fine, it knows which one I prefer to be a boot drive (and also which one that I don't), the master and slave jumpers are right, and yet, it boots up on the wrong one.
Is there an easy answer to this? I know I can disconnect the 20 gig drive, boot up on a windows startup floppy and format the 6 gig, and then work from there. Or is it that the windows startup floppy *is* the easy answer.
Thanks in advance. BTW - I am a happy ubuntu user, and I'm ready to graduate from my Dell 'let's try linux out' machine. I may keep a windows box around for my family, but I see no reason to not load ubuntu into any machine I am personally using. Ubuntu presents me with challenges, but I enjoy working through them (most of the time, anyway). Some of the challenges are surely the age and speed of the machine I've installed ubuntu in to.
terry