Damn Linux - now it's cost me money

D-Dan · Oct 31, 2009, 16:11:10

After dual booting Ubuntu 9.04 and Vista quite hapilly since April, I was eager to update to Ubuntu 9.10. I tried the beta, which failed to boot completely, but on release of the stable version I downloaded it and burned to a CD. The first test didn't go well, with the LiveCD demanding a login name and password that I didn't have.

I re-downloaded from a different mirror, and this time the live CD booted to the desktop, but when I went to install, the only drive it could see was my Vista drive (I have 3 in this machine), so of course, I aborted. After some reading, I downloaded the text-install version this morning and tried again. This time I was able to install to my Linux drive, but after installation it failed to boot, hanging just after Grub.

On a completely unrelated matter

, When I got the live CD booted last night, it reported that my non-bootable data drive was reporting bad sectors, and not wanting to lose anything important, I popped over to Aria this morning and bought a replacement (double capacity, too).

Lo and behold, Ubuntu is happy to boot now. Seems like it's less tolerant of bad drives, even if they are none of it's concern, in the latest version. So after several months being blissfully unaware that any of my drives had any problems, Ubuntu made me buy a new one.

Granted, the new 500Gb HD was half the price of Windows OS, and doubled my capacity, and I now have a 250Gb HD that I can stick in PC2 until it dies, but even so

Steve

Rik · Oct 31, 2009, 16:13:23

It could have been worse, Steve, you could have gone to PC World.

D-Dan · Oct 31, 2009, 16:16:12

Believe it or not - I considered it. PCW is 5 minutes drive, Aria 25 minutes. I worked out how much extra I would pay for petrol, and the Aria trip still came in at about half the price

Steve

Rik · Oct 31, 2009, 16:16:40

bobleslie · Oct 31, 2009, 17:28:13

It was a good enough reason, Steve, to buy a new HDD.

I admire your courage in dual booting Linux and Vista. I always keep them well apart so I rest easily at night.

Of course, I realise that there are those who swear it is 'safe as houses'.

D-Dan · Oct 31, 2009, 17:34:20

There's a safe way, and a less safe way. My way, I have Vista installed on it's own drive, complete with MBR. Ubuntu is installed on it's own drive, complete with Grub. I boot from the Ubuntu drive normally, and select my OS (or the last one booted is automatically chosen).

If, for any reason, Grub gets corrupted, I can switch the boot order of the drives, and Vista boots as though it lives here alone.

Safe as houses, and always recoverable. The only danger is when installing, and triple checking that I chose the correct drive to install whichever OS I am installing goes on. I get some more fun when Win 7 eventually arrives (It was supposed to be here last week), although if the upgrade works (after safely backing up Vista, of course), then all is good here

Steve

kinmel · Oct 31, 2009, 18:18:07

I always do installs with just one drive connected on the PC and then re-connect the other drives afterwards.

Every O.S. has it's own drive, it's swap, or page, files and a recovery image are on a partition on one of the other discs. no working data is stored on any PC

All my M.B.s allow me to select at start-up which drive to boot from and thus which O.S., currently with Windows XP as default . The changeover to Windows 7 is a work in progress.

The main benefit is that each O.S. uses it's vanilla loader and the O.S. in use is always on C:

Every O.S. uses Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, VLC, etc and all share common folders on the main server for storage etc.

Ted · Oct 31, 2009, 20:05:26

Quote from: bobleslie on Oct 31, 2009, 17:28:13
I admire your courage in dual booting Linux and Vista. I always keep them well apart so I rest easily at night.

Absolutely agree! In fact, I keep my copy of Vista in PC world!! Never had a problem

......

bobleslie · Oct 31, 2009, 21:09:43

Nice one Ted!

D-Dan · Oct 31, 2009, 21:32:48

Well - I have to say - the drive swap wasn't as smooth as I thought. The drive I replaced also houses my scratch partition, where I keep the pagefile, internet cache, temp files etc. (makes cleaning easier since a quick format erases all my junk in one go). However, I made one small error.

Earlier on suddenly I couldn't load any web pages in either FF or Internet Explorer. Fearing the worst, I did a full virus and malware scan, only for both to come up clear. After closer examination, I spotted the problem. The scratch partition was full. It took a couple more minutes for me to realise I'd set the partition as 20 Mb and not 20 Gb as intended. Doh!

All fixed now

Steve

Rik · Nov 01, 2009, 01:04:27

Been there, got the T-shirt, Steve. Damned zeros.