[ale] HELP! Mint machine is booting from the wrong hard drive

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

see below

Phil Turmel <philip at turmel.org> wrote:

>On 07/02/2013 11:15 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> One of my machines is running Mint 13 (based on Ubuntu 12.04).  The
>> machine has two hard drives, a 320 GB hard drive on /dev/sda and a
>500
>> GB hard drive on /dev/sdb.  The 500 GB drive is for backup purposes
>> only.  Tonight, I made an exact clone (as far as I know) of the 320
>GB
>> hdd over to the 500 GB hdd with clonezilla.  The 500 GB hdd is still
>> attached.
>
>The problem is that you made an *exact* clone.  Modern distros use the
>UUID or LABEL embedded in a filesystem to find the necessary partitions
>during boot (to avoid issues with hot-pluggable drives).  If you clone
>partitions, both will have that metadata, and your boot process becomes
>random.
>
>> My bios is set to boot from the 320 GB drive (/dev/sda).  Once I
>boot,
>> the grub menu asks if I want to boot Mint on /dev/sda2, which is
>> correct.  I select that, but, when the system comes up, I find that
>the
>> 500 GB hdd (/dev/sdB2) is the one that's mounted, and that's not what
>I
>> want.
>> 
>> Can someone tell me why this is happening and how to prevent it
>without
>> physically unplugging the drive?
>
>Change the label and uuid on the partition(s) on one of the drives,
>then
>change /etc/fstab within that one to point to its own label/uuid.  The
>utilities needed vary with filesystem type, but it would be "tune2fs"
>for anything in the "ext" family.
>
>Use a rescue CD or thumb drive so you have total control over temporary
>mounts.  Check your work with "blkid".
>
>Phil
>

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the info.  I understand what you're saying.  I have a few more questions.

* Would I not want an exact clone if I had to put the backup drive into service?

* Do you know if Windows is susceptible to this problem?  I've had a clone drive connected to Windows in the past and haven't noticed a problem.  To be honest, I don't know if I booted that way, but I was wondering if that's a problem in that environment.

* I'd rather not have to tweak every backup that I make.  Is there some way to automate the changes?  Or, perhaps I should just put a switch on the sata power cable and switch the drive off when I don't want to be accessing the backup drive.

Sincerely,

Ron



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Ron Frazier
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