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Installed to Wrong Drive

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bentHnau
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Installed to Wrong Drive

#1 Post by bentHnau »

I'm 100% positive that I chose the correct options to install Debian to sdb, but it installed to sda (those are my only two drives). I also chose to install the boot loader to sda (which had an old version of Ubuntu on it); could that have caused the problem? My new Debian installation boots fine, but sdb (which was a previous Debian installation) does not even show up in the boot menu anymore.

I ran system diagnostics and got "self-test unsuccessful" for sdb, yet I can mount it, chroot into it, even update and upgrade packages after chrooting, and fsck comes out clean. I looked up the self-test result and found out that it could be a false alarm. I want to try to install another distribution on sdb, but I'm worried about what will happen.

Does this installation to the wrong drive sound like something I should be concerned about for future installations? Was choosing to re-install the boot loader to the drive that already had a boot loader a bad choice? I don't know what to make of any of this.

Bulkley
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Re: Installed to Wrong Drive

#2 Post by Bulkley »

What did you use to do the install? An iso on a USB stick? If so, did you accidentally install the boot loader on the USB stick? I did that once.

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makh
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Joined: 2011-10-09 09:16

Re: Installed to Wrong Drive

#3 Post by makh »

You may do two ways:

1. Super Grub Disk / Grml

2. Edit /etc/grub.d/40_custom to boot the debian on /sdb
I'm 100% positive that I chose the correct options to install Debian to sdb, but it installed to sda
It may have occurred that during installation debian installer wuld have seen your sda as sdb and viceversa. I dont know about your drives configuration, but sometimes the bios can even change hd0 to hd1 ... It is a bit tricky to have more drives during installation.
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bentHnau
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Re: Installed to Wrong Drive

#4 Post by bentHnau »

I got the old Debian to show up in the boot menu just by updating grub.
Bulkley wrote:What did you use to do the install? An iso on a USB stick? If so, did you accidentally install the boot loader on the USB stick? I did that once.
Yes I used a live usb. If I had installed the boot loader on the usb, wouldn't my new Debian installation not show up at all?

Bulkley
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Re: Installed to Wrong Drive

#5 Post by Bulkley »

bentHnau wrote:If I had installed the boot loader on the usb, wouldn't my new Debian installation not show up at all?
One would think so but you may actually have two boot loaders. It's best to take a look.

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