Wasn't sure where to post this as it's software and hardware related and possibly an act of a malevolent god.
I built a system out of a case I scrounged from the dump and spare parts lying around the house. Can't see how the hardware matters with this problem but it's an ASUS M3A MB, 500W Cool Power Pentium 4 switching PSU and a PCIe ATI GPU. All that stuff is working fine with a couple of 4gig sticks of ram that only work like 2gig sticks due to MB limitations.
Anyway I installed LM 17.1 onto an older 500G IDE drive and updated all the stuff in the list and it was working fine. I'm just getting into Linux really for the first time and was really liking it with plans to become a full-time user once I can scrounge up funds to replace the failing MB in this XP Pro system. XP is on an aging 320G drive that's
low on space so for the last 6 months or more I've had a new 1T WD Blue drive in there for storage. I also had installed XP Pro 64bit on it but wasn't using it as the 32bit XP on the 320 was all setup and working great for my meagre needs. My system refuses to boot with 2 drives in it now so it wasn't connected in there.
Before installing LM onto a drive I ran it off the CD on the new build and used it to copy some files off the 1T drive to a USB stick so I could transfer them to my XP rig.
After getting LM updated and running fine I hooked up the 1T again and restarted. I planned to transfer everything I wanted to keep over to my 3T USB3 drive for safe keeping. I'd ripped my 200 CD music collection and stored it all on the 1T plus all my downloads, hundreds of photos etc.
Something went horribly wrong. LM came up with some message that flashed up and disappeared then after another try came up with a GRUB menu that has 2 listings that are the same and seem to lead to the 1T drive plus 2 other listings for MemTest. I disconnected the 1T drive and it came up with the same thing and LM won't boot at all.
Not a big deal I think. If I have to I can re-install LM if I have to and maybe learn something in the process.
I decide to disconnect the 500G IDE drive I installed LM on, re-connect the 1T SATA drive and then boot off the LM CD and do the file transfers to the 3T as originally planned like I did the first time. Seemed like a logical work-around to me.
Not to be. LM wasn't seeing the drive so I fired up gparted and it couldn't see the drive either. Hit the Install LM icon and it sat there doing a scanning for drive thing for an hour with no results other than an error box finally popping up saying it couldn't detect any drives other than the USB stick. Shut down, unplugged the 1T, removed the usb stick and restarted from the CD. Same results.
Tried some of the various rescue boot CDs I have on hand and none of them can see the drive. It's detected in the POST and says SMART enabled and OK. Finally Acronis Drive Director came up with errors but showed me the drive. Says it has 1 partition at 27.5G and the rest is un-allocated space. I originally formatted the brand new drive as one Primary, Active drive to do the original XP 64bit install so that info is really messed up.
I made no attempts to change anything with the partition table during all this or run any repairs as I wanted to hear from those that might know what is going on with this.
I was not trying to make a dual-boot system and had no idea that LM would install GRUB without some sort of warning or options to do that. Seems to be a real bad bug to me that it did this and if I can't somehow access the 1T drive and recover the files off it I'm not going to be a happy camper.
Any thoughts on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.
L8r
I built a system out of a case I scrounged from the dump and spare parts lying around the house. Can't see how the hardware matters with this problem but it's an ASUS M3A MB, 500W Cool Power Pentium 4 switching PSU and a PCIe ATI GPU. All that stuff is working fine with a couple of 4gig sticks of ram that only work like 2gig sticks due to MB limitations.
Anyway I installed LM 17.1 onto an older 500G IDE drive and updated all the stuff in the list and it was working fine. I'm just getting into Linux really for the first time and was really liking it with plans to become a full-time user once I can scrounge up funds to replace the failing MB in this XP Pro system. XP is on an aging 320G drive that's
low on space so for the last 6 months or more I've had a new 1T WD Blue drive in there for storage. I also had installed XP Pro 64bit on it but wasn't using it as the 32bit XP on the 320 was all setup and working great for my meagre needs. My system refuses to boot with 2 drives in it now so it wasn't connected in there.
Before installing LM onto a drive I ran it off the CD on the new build and used it to copy some files off the 1T drive to a USB stick so I could transfer them to my XP rig.
After getting LM updated and running fine I hooked up the 1T again and restarted. I planned to transfer everything I wanted to keep over to my 3T USB3 drive for safe keeping. I'd ripped my 200 CD music collection and stored it all on the 1T plus all my downloads, hundreds of photos etc.
Something went horribly wrong. LM came up with some message that flashed up and disappeared then after another try came up with a GRUB menu that has 2 listings that are the same and seem to lead to the 1T drive plus 2 other listings for MemTest. I disconnected the 1T drive and it came up with the same thing and LM won't boot at all.
Not a big deal I think. If I have to I can re-install LM if I have to and maybe learn something in the process.
I decide to disconnect the 500G IDE drive I installed LM on, re-connect the 1T SATA drive and then boot off the LM CD and do the file transfers to the 3T as originally planned like I did the first time. Seemed like a logical work-around to me.
Not to be. LM wasn't seeing the drive so I fired up gparted and it couldn't see the drive either. Hit the Install LM icon and it sat there doing a scanning for drive thing for an hour with no results other than an error box finally popping up saying it couldn't detect any drives other than the USB stick. Shut down, unplugged the 1T, removed the usb stick and restarted from the CD. Same results.
Tried some of the various rescue boot CDs I have on hand and none of them can see the drive. It's detected in the POST and says SMART enabled and OK. Finally Acronis Drive Director came up with errors but showed me the drive. Says it has 1 partition at 27.5G and the rest is un-allocated space. I originally formatted the brand new drive as one Primary, Active drive to do the original XP 64bit install so that info is really messed up.
I made no attempts to change anything with the partition table during all this or run any repairs as I wanted to hear from those that might know what is going on with this.
I was not trying to make a dual-boot system and had no idea that LM would install GRUB without some sort of warning or options to do that. Seems to be a real bad bug to me that it did this and if I can't somehow access the 1T drive and recover the files off it I'm not going to be a happy camper.
Any thoughts on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.
L8r