Installing a second HDD (with old data)

conn-fused · 10-08-2004, 06:42 PM

Here's a big newbie question for you all:

I've just changed motherboards, and done a new install of Mandrake 9.2 on a new HDD. It all went smoothly (except for some sound issues with the new board which are an entirely different story

).

I want to get some data off the old HDD (which ran Mandrake 9.2 off a different motherboard and which - just to complicate matters - suffered a kernel panic after I switched motherboards and tried to boot using it).

If I plug the old HDD in as a slave (via cable-select), what can I expect? How do I find and mount the old partitions, or will Mandrake do this automatically (and could that cause problems since there is a root and home partition on each drive)?

Comments and past experiences are welcome, and I hope they'll also be of use to others.

m00t00 · 10-08-2004, 06:57 PM

If mandrake mounts it automaticly, It wont cause problems, but I doubt it will.
You have to do it your self. This drive, which I gathered from your post as the slave on the first cable, would be /dev/hdb

You need to mount that manually. (as root), do something like this.

mkdir /mnt/oldroot
mkdir /mnt/oldhome
mount /dev/hdbX /mnt/oldroot
mount /dev/hdbY /mnt/oldhome

(Where X and Y are the appropriate partition numbers. With mandrake, its usually 1 and 5)

ranger_nemo · 10-08-2004, 07:01 PM

If it's on the primary cable, it will be /dev/hdb . If it's on the secondary cable, it will be /dev/hdd .

It shouldn't cause any trouble booting. Once you're up and running, you can see what partitions are on the drive with "fdisk -l /dev/hdb" as root. Use hdd if you need. It will list something like...

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          16      128488+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2              17          49      265072+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda3              50        1337    10345860   83  Linux
/dev/hda4            1338        7296    47865667+  83  Linux

Then, try mounting a partition and seeing what's on it. As root, "mount -t ext3 /dev/hdb1 /mnt/floppy" then "ls /mnt/floppy". If it doesn't list the files you want, unmount it with "umount /dev/hdb1". Note, there isn't an N betwixt the U and the M in umount. If it gives you an error about the filesystem type, try ext2, or reiserfs, or whatever-it-is if you can remember from when you installed. I don't know what Mandrake defaults to, but it's usually ext3 or 2. If the files aren't there, and there's another partition, try mounting that one. You can skip "Linux Swap".