Installing Grub
 

I copied all the files from a IDE hard disk to my SATA hard disk partition
using the cp -avx command, when I try to bootup from SATA hard disk it shows "Verifying DMI pool data" and gets hangup. what I need to do to get boot from SATA hard disk. when I look at the /boot file I found that it was grub.

which distro??
boot with a rescue disk.
then

or whichever the boot disk is

I installed GRUB boot loader into the /dev/sda1 partition.
When I boot up the system, I got the following error message.

mkrootdev: label /not found
mount : error 2 mounting ext3
pivotroot : pivot_root (/sysroot, /sysroot/intrd) failed : 2
unmount /initrd/proc failed : 2

kernel panic : No init found
Try passing init= option to kernel

Give us the results of fdisk -l

Device Boot
/dev/sda1 *
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda3
/dev/sda4
/dev/sda5

Is that the result of fdisk -l?

I can not give you the technical reason but I believe you need to use a clone program or the dd command to accomplish what you are trying to do. The copy command will not work.

Get a copy of the UBCD, make sure you get the free one ... its got Grub on it,navigate to automatically install...

hi

I installed GRUB boot loader into the /dev/sda1 partition.

would need a bootloader in mbr to chainload to it.

as mentioned put grub in mbr is the safest.

if you are not using ext4 the /boot partition or /boot sub-folder to / can run on grub2.

2) dd command would have been better as it can copy over mbr but why would you want to?
It would be safer to do a new partition table and a clean install.
This assumes you have backups.

but your kernel on ide may not have the modules for your sata....introducing a new error.

so IMHO it is better to do a clean install just to make sure new preferred distro detects and configs all your hardware.

did you do a

drop the 1 :)