On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 09:09:27 -0700
wes <[email protected]> dijo:

>> >this evening I decided to try Xubuntu again.
>> I should have added that when I boot I get:
>>
>> error: no such partition
>> grub rescue>

>my first guess is that the installer installed GRUB onto one drive,
>but the BIOS is attempting to boot the other drive. you could try
>swapping the cables going to them, or unplugging them one at a time
>til it boots (or doesn't). I agree that it should have worked once you
>repeated the installation to the other drive.

That was my guess also, so I swapped the cables, but it still gave me
the error message. I finally got it to install without issue by
unplugging both the 1 TB drive and the second 320 GB drive. 

It appears to be running fine, but the hard drive light is on
constantly - not just flickering, but solid. If I shut down it finally
goes out, and when I restart the light flickers a bit during the boot
process, and then stays on continuously. Yet I hear no disk activity.
Using the GUI Task Manager I see nothing that might be causing this.

Palimpsest says the 320 GB drive that is in use is 6 years old (can it
be that long since I built this computer?) and that it has "a few bad
sectors." Looking at the Smart data the Current Pending Sector Count is
in red and it says "Number of sectors waiting to be remapped." I assume
this is the cause of the disk light being on constantly. The Smart data
says it will not be remapped until there is a failed write attempt. 

>I have no idea why the 1TB doesn't show up in BIOS, but I'd unplug its
>cable too, just in case.

This is very strange. Hard drives do fail, but for it to be working
fine and fail completely just when I installed Xubuntu would be a
colossal coincidence. But it does not show up even in the BIOS. I can't
grasp how Xubuntu could have caused that. 

Now that I have Xubuntu installed and working I tried shutting the
computer down and plugging the other two drives in, then rebooting.
First I plugged in the 1 TB drive, but it still did not appear in the
BIOS and, of course, Xubuntu does not see it. Then I plugged in the
other 320 GB drive, which the BIOS does see, but Xubuntu can't see this
drive either. The 1 TB drive is formatted ext4, used only for data
storage. I believe the other 320 GB drive may be unformatted. Yet
Palimpsest does not see it either. 

There is one other oddity that was a problem with Mint and previous
installations of Xubuntu 12.04 as well, that is, if there is a USB stick
inserted during boot I will get an error message that the USB stick has
no operating system. The boot order in the BIOS is set to 1) Removable,
2) CD/DVD, 3) Hard Disk, and 4) Hard Disk. I thought that this means
the BIOS should look for an OS on each of those devices in the above
order, and if it does not find an OS, to move on to the next device.
It's not moving on to the next device. I can't find anything in the
BIOS to change this behavior. 

Well, at least I have music again. 
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