[SOLVED] 13.37 Boot fails if a particular SATA drive is in system

Noony · 12-31-2011, 03:41 PM

Wow! What a conscientious and thoughtful post! Thank You Erik_FL!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik_FL

You could be having a problem with an incorrect GPT. Slackware 12 might see the protective MBR and Slackware 13.37 might try to use the GPT information.

This looked like the most promising thing to pursue because the next thing to print at the point of hang would have been the partition table. I had never heard of GPT, so I guess I've been out of touch too long. Anyway, I wiped the partitions and wrote a few sectors of zeros, and ...drumroll... it boots!!! The SSD is sda, so I had to fix fstab, and now the system is up and running. I didn't repartition yet, though (crossing fingers).

Strangely, the system on the 13.37 install disk still hangs the same as before.

Thanks again for your help

Noony · 12-31-2011, 05:13 PM

Hi all,
I've cloned my system onto the SSD, and I'm typing this with the system running on the SSD.

Just a little more info for those who asked:
Motherboard: Asus K8V SE Delux
Drive Controllers: Promise PDC20378 and VIA VT6420 (within VT8237)
SSD: Patriot Pyro SE (60GB)

I had partitioned the drive using WinXP, but I only resorted to this after my Linux would not boot with the SSD in its factory condition.

Now that it's proved to work, I can maybe start shopping for an MB with an on-board sata(3) inerface.

Erik_FL · 01-01-2012, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noony

Hi all,
I've cloned my system onto the SSD, and I'm typing this with the system running on the SSD.

Just a little more info for those who asked:
Motherboard: Asus K8V SE Delux
Drive Controllers: Promise PDC20378 and VIA VT6420 (within VT8237)
SSD: Patriot Pyro SE (60GB)

I had partitioned the drive using WinXP, but I only resorted to this after my Linux would not boot with the SSD in its factory condition.

Now that it's proved to work, I can maybe start shopping for an MB with an on-board sata(3) inerface.

If you plan to use RAID and boot multiple operating systems then do some reading about operating system RAID versus fake hardware RAID. It can be difficult to boot from RAID, or have multiple operating systems access the same partitions in a RAID array. For the most flexibility, I recommend using an Intel chip-set that has the ICH9 or similar controller supporting Intel Matrix Storage Manager. Almost any kind of RAID is fine as long as you don't need to boot from the RAID array or access the same RAID partitions from multiple operating systems. Installing Slackware on fake hardware RAID is easier than with some other distros because of the manual partitioning and simpler text setup utility. It allows one to load special drivers or perform additional steps during the installation. Slackware has also made steady improvements in the "initrd" support for RAID and system initialization scripts. Every release has made things easier for RAID.