Replacing old hard disk with a new one

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, Paul Smith wrote:

> On 10/26/05, jdow <jdow at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> Can we go further?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Have you partitioned the drive yet, Paul?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> {^_^}
>>>>>
>>>>> No, I have not, Jdow. How can I do that?
>>>>
>>>> "fdisk /dev/hda"
>>>>
>>>> But PLEASE PLEASE read partitioning HOWTOs and documentation first so you
>>>> know what you are doing, first.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, you could bring up the same partitioning tool you saw when
>>>> installing, DiskDestroyer or something like that, and use it. But you
>>>> still want to read the partitioning HOWTOs to get a notion of how you
>>>> want to partition the drive.

Or use parted.  Or kparted (parted with a GUI).

>>>>
>>>> I realize grub documentation is impenetrable by sane people. But do give
>>>> it a try. After doing so I recommend a visit with your local shrink if
>>>> you think you understand grub's documentation. {^_-}

ROFL.

>>>>
>>>> {^_^}
>>>
>>> Thanks again, Jdow. Perhaps, the best solution for a inexpert like me
>>> is to install some operating  system on hda, and the partitioning will
>>> be done. Tried:
>>>
>>> $ fdisk /dev/hda
>>>
>>> Unable to open /dev/hda
>>> $
>>
>> OOPS! THAT is a problem. The OS does not see the disk. This is not a
>> good thing. It might be interesting to look at the dmesg log after a
>> reboot to see how if the drive is found. If it is then "/dev/hda"
>> should be a valid drive. I wonder if something else has it active.

Or he isn't root.  fdisk won't open a device it can't write to.  Normal 
users can't write to raw disk devices.

>>
>> Er, did you hotplug the drive? I'm not even sure how you booted without
>> the boot sector in place - I suppose you selected a different drive as
>> the boot drive in your BIOS? (To recognize the new drive you probably do
>> need to reboot.) I'd expect the knoppix live CD to recognize the drive,
>> though, if you're still working from it.
>
> I can see that the BIOS recognizes the disk. So I guess it is
> correctly hotplugged. On the other hand, the computer does not boot,
> unless I introduce the live CD, as the boot sequence is:
>
> cdrom, disk
>
> Paul
>
>
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs