Need To Access HDD

[Claire]

Hello All, I have 2 hard drives. One 40gb hard drive has XP and the other 40gb hard drive(sdb1) has Mint on a 6gb partition with a 1gb partition for the swap. SDB1 has 30gb, SDB2 is the swap and SDB3 ext3 is the 6gb with MINT. On the30gb partition I have Flight Sim X. I previously had Mepis on the 6 gb partition and formatted it when I installed Mint over it. When I boot (dual) one of my choices is still Mepis but I got rid of Mepis, it is saying Mepis is on /dev/sdb1. How do I access sdb1 (mount) and totally delete Mepis? How do I also mount my XP drive, sda? I got rid of Mepis because after many tries I couldn't adjust the gamma on my ATI card. I'm really impressed with Mint, it is the best of all the distros I tried, It's even better than Hardy, everything worked (video, printer, wireless) without going crazy getting drivers etc. I hope this makes sense, any help would be appreciated.

[rbanavara]

I assume you have the boot loader from Mint & not the one from MEPIS (meaning there is no separate boot partition). in that case, the MEPIS you see is just an entry on the GRUB boot loader config file (/boot/grub/menu.lst). If you prefer you can remove / comment that section & it wont show up during boot. preferably if you paste the disk geometry (sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb), that would make things clear. Also just make sure MEPIS was on sdb3 and not on sdb1.

To boot windows XP, you can chain load it by adding an entry like:

title Windows
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

to the menu.lst (all the digits in root line are zeroes, assuming your windows is on sda1)

[Claire]

"

I assume you have the boot loader from Mint & not the one from MEPIS (meaning there is no separate boot partition).
in that case, the MEPIS you see is just an entry on the GRUB boot loader config file (/boot/grub/menu.lst)."

How do I find this file(boot/grub/menu.lst)? I can't get to it, do I use terminal? I am a NOOB so I need simple instructions.

"If you prefer you can remove / comment that section & it wont show up during boot. preferably if you paste the disk geometry (sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb), that would make things clear. Also just make sure MEPIS was on sdb3 and not on sdb1."

Also I can't find (sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb)

"To boot windows XP, you can chain load it by adding an entry like:
title Windows
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

to the menu.lst (all the digits in root line are zeroes, assuming your windows is on sda1)

"


I copied this from File System-Boot-Grub-Menu.lst but I could not delete any of the Mepis stuff.


# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sdb1.
title MEPIS at sdb1, newest kernel (on /dev/sdb1)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb1 nomce quiet splash vga=791
savedefault
boot


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sdb1.
title MEPIS at sdb1, kernel 2.6.22-1-mepis-smp (on /dev/sdb1)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-1-mepis-smp root=/dev/sdb1 nomce quiet splash vga=791
savedefault
boot


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sdb1.
title MEMTEST (on /dev/sdb1)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
savedefault
boot

[rbanavara]

to edit the file you should be opening it with root privileges, ie, using sudo:

sudo gedit <your location of menu.lst>/menu.lst

Also looking at the configuration, it suggests MEPIS was installed on first partition of the second hard disk and it may not contain 'Flight Sim X' as you have mentioned earlier. IF you can paste the fdisk output, that will clarify if first partition is linux partition or not.

[Claire]

Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xde0cde0c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 3952 31744408+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 3953 4081 1036192+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 4082 4865 6297480 83 Linux

rbanavara, Here is the disk geometery,finally.
Also, I cant get into the GRUB boot loader config file (/boot/grub/menu.lst)
Do I go into terminal to access this file?
I do appreciate your patience and help.

UPDATE: I typed in "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" and It worked. I deleted the Mepis stuff and now I will re-boot and see what happens.

UPDATE 2: I re-booted and it worked, and the Mepis stuff is all gone.

[rbanavara]

As you keep working with linux (read removing & installing distros), basic grub configuration becomes second nature. as for as for the 'Flight Sim X' part, if its windows stuff I doubt it still there as all partitions on sdb are formatted to linux / linux swap.