Hello All,

I've got a not too old laptop, which has one pcmcia port, into which I placed an eSATA card; NOTE: The BIOS on this laptop has no support to boot off eSATA-PCMCIA.

I then proceeded to install xubuntu 9.04, the entire installation went great, except for one thing...The system will not boot.

Here is what I've tried:

1. Installed "/boot", "/dev" and "/proc" in a USB thumb drive, then SWAP and "/" within the eSATA connected drive.
RESULT: Boots, then comes back with "/dev, /proc" not found within specified time limit, dropping to a shell...

2. Install "/boot" and "SWAP" in USB thumb drive, then / into the eSATA connected drive.
RESULT: I got a "GRUB" in the screen, but no bootup whatsoever

3. Installed all within the PCMCIA eSATA drive, install went well, but there was never an attempt to boot off the eSATA as BIOS does not see it as a drive

Any thoughts or possible kernel params to use so that I can load the pcmcia module from the kernel and have it boot properly?

Thank you all...

You should set "/" on USB thumb drive, but with most of the folders in it on the eSATA drive softlinked to the USB thumb drive.


folders located on eSATA: /etc, /var, /usr, /home, ..... and then all separately softlinked to USB thumb drive.