Grub and old hard drives

[Timothy Murphy]

Karl Larsen wrote:

>     For several years I have let the anaconda loader put the grub boot
> message in the spot for such things on /dev/hda/. Fine, a couple of
> years later I bought a much bigger hard drive and this Linux is on that.
> But Grub is still using /dev/hda/.
> 
>     These are both Western Digital hard drives and I have had good luck
> with them. But the first to fail will be the oldest I expect. When that
> happens Grub will fail. This is a real hard thing to fix :-(
> 
>     So I have a plan. First read "Info Grub" and see how to put a Grub
> boot in the boot section of /dev/hdb/. This I think is pretty simple. I
> can do this today. But how to cause the file /boot/grub/grub.conf to use
> this new boot point may be difficult.
> 
>     Assuming this is possible I will let the list know.

I think you need to distinguish between the grub loader proper,
and the grub support files in /boot .

You can put either on either (or both) disks.
But if the loader is in the sdb/hdb MBR
you'll have to tell the BIOS to look there.
By default it will look in the sda/hda MBR.

I presently have /boot on sdb, and copies of the grub loader
on sda and sdb, in case something nasty happens to the rather old sda.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland