Need pointers to add single SATA storage drive

[DealerMan]

Yikes, soooo much information I searched through to fix this.

I have Mint 7 installed (sda1) with a second drive for storage (sdb1), both IDE drives. I attempted to add a third SATA drive for more storage, only to hose grub. The SATA drive decided to take sda1 for itself, leaving me semi-stranded. I'll skip all the details dealing with grub and trying to correct the boot problems. I've disconnected the SATA drive and re-installed Mint 7 to start fresh.

I understand from searching about the pitfalls of UUID. I already know how to edit fstab, menu.lst, and mount partitions. What I don't understand is how to add the SATA drive and have it be sdc1 without hosing it all up.

I appreciate any help/links/prayers.

[lagagnon]

Praying certainly won't help. There is an old Russian proverb which says: "sure, pray if you want to, but keep rowing to shore"!
If the SATA drive became sda then perhaps you did not install it correctly or reset your BIOS afterwards? I would reinstall it, make sure all the jumpers are set properly on each drive and that you have the IDE drive set to be first boot device in BIOS and then check the situation with "sudo fdisk -l" and post that information here.

[DealerMan]

Yes, boot order. BIOS has options for 3 devices, with a fourth being 'other boot device' yes/no. I'll change the first to be OS drive, and disable all others. I'll post back with the outcome. Thanks lagagnon.

[DealerMan]

No joy. Still got boot error ending with initramfs prompt. According to what I've seen others do, they either add the UUID or all_generic_ide to the boot arguments to remedy this problem.

[DealerMan]

fdisk -l output (SATA drive disconnected so I could get online).

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00084832

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9327 74919096 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 9328 9729 3229065 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 9328 9729 3229033+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000916ac

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 30401 244196001 8e Linux LVM



blkid:

/dev/sda1: UUID="5d36838b-36f0-4540-ad68-1bac65eaf753" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda5: TYPE="swap" UUID="0a817167-fea2-414d-92ea-18f7820f686d"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="8e32af1f-67fc-4966-b35d-21f5d09c97c5" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"

[clhodapp]

You can edit /boot/grub/device.map, but this would need to be done after the drive was already attached...
Couldn't you do this?
1) Figure out which device is (hd 0), (hd 1), and (hd 2)
2) Edit /boot/grub/device.map to what you want
3) Edit /etc/fstab to use sda, sdb, etc. instead of uuid's
Maybe some slight correction of this basic form is required?

[DealerMan]

Device.map is a new one for me. I can boot with the liveCD and hopefully edit that file correctly. Thanks clhodapp, I'll give it a shot right now.

[DealerMan]

After quite a few editing tweaks & reboots, I decided to quit fighting and reinstall Mint with the system detecting all devices fresh. The only hangup after it was all over was the BIOS configuration. My mobo is an older MSI 648 Max-L, and has no setting per se regarding SATA drives. It does list SCSI though, and ultimately that's how it would boot to the correct drive through grub. Now on to the TV Tuner setup....

Thanks for the help guys.

[clhodapp]

Good luck .