Old How To Question

sjpoole12 · 03-30-2019, 08:52 PM

OK, I've got a machine that is by today's standards from the dark ages - but it works.

I've got multiple hard drives that are the same size/model. So when I install I don't know what it wants to boot from until I get to the 'Install Boot Loader' screen. If I've defined things as RAID-1 for boot I have to go back and redo my disk allocations.

How do I see what are the correct SATA1 and SATA2 disks before the boot loader screen?

TIA
Sandy

fatmac · 03-31-2019, 06:30 AM

Maybe running dmesg in a terminal will give you what you are after(?).

berndbausch · 03-31-2019, 06:51 AM

The boot loader relies on BIOS or UEFI to tell it what the “first”, “second” etc. disk is. There is no universal way to check it, I am afraid; it depends on your boot ROM and on the SATA connectors to which the disks are attached. To complicate things further: If you have RAID, fake or real, the disks that the boot loader sees are actually RAID LUNs.

Enterprise servers allow you to reconfigure the drive order in the boot ROM, perhaps there are PCs that have that feature as well.