Hi, I already put a post for the same problem in the "linux newbie" section because I have no idea if I should put the question in place for general newbies or the place with specific distros. If this post here is inappropriate, moderators pls kindly remove it and forgive my ignorance.

I used to have a mandriva 2007 running on an IDE hard disk, and then had to get a new disk because the old one is obviously dying. To avoid great amount of time on re-compiling many programs I have installed over time, I decided to clone the distro from the old disk instead of doing a clean installation on the old one.

Here is the scenario: the old hd is an IDE disk therefore gets assigned as /dev/hda by mdk, and the new one is a sata disk then as /dev/sda. I used partimage to backup the partitions on the old one and than restore the images to the new disk. Then I modified the /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/fstab on the new sata disk (basically changing anything refering /dev/hda to /dev/sda), reinstalled lilo, and boot up the machine.

The bootloader came up successfully and went on trying to boot the mdk distro on the sata disk. Unfortunately it reported that, because not being able to find the /dev/root device, it encountered a kernel panic and failed. I did some research around and was told that /dev/root was a symbolic link, but obviously the link is not a static link. So is there any way to tell the distro now the /dev/root should be /dev/sda instead of /dev/hda? Of I really have to do an installation from the beginning?

Thanks for anybody that could give me a pointer.

that is odd, what i do to back up my Slackware install is use Midnight Commander to copy it to two other disk partitions (and they are bootable and useable) then i simply edit /etc/fstab to reflect the proper / partition, so it is basically the same thing you did, i have two copies of my install as backup just in case something goes wrong with the original, plus i am confident when it comes to experimenting with new software because if i bork the system it is a no-brainer to boot to a copied install and restore the original which would be a 5 minute job...

i wish i could help you resolve your problem though...

Most likely your kernel has no support for your SATA controller available at boot time. It should either be built in kernel or provided by initrd. I'd have rebuilt my kernel when it was on IDE to include all needed support for new hardware.

Please post your thread in only one forum. Posting a single thread in the most relevant forum will make it easier for members to help you and will keep the discussion in one place. This thread is being closed because it is a duplicate.