Mount/Unmount/Move HardDrive

[Gatch]

We are running Mandrake 8.2 on a server in a classroom setting with approximately 15 PC’s and Mac’s connected to it.

 

We tried to change a hard drive which is used as a backup copy of our data files by going into Mandrake Control Center and unmounting the drive. When we rebooted the system would not reboot. We reconnected the drive and the system rebooted. We then unmounted and cleared the drive from the Mandrake Control Center. The system would not reboot and in failsafe mode we received the messages “cannot read filesystem” & “superblock” is incorrect.

 

We then used KNOPPIX to reboot and determined that the files were not corrupt. We opened /etc/mtab and etc/fstab. Fstab still had a line addressing hdc1, the drive we removed. We deactivated the line in knoppix with the # sign using root and emacs. On reboot of Mandrake everything booted properly.

 

Would you please describe how to do the following:

 

1. How can we remove a HD from a computer without destroying the data and mount points?

 

2. How can we place mount points on a drive that contains data without destroying the data?

 

3. How can we take a drive from one computer and mount it on another computer without destroying the data?

 

Thank you for your help. We have really enjoyed Mandrake Linux and are now trying to document the differences in Mandrake 9.2 so we can upgrade our server in the future. We have Mandrake 9.2 up and running as a test server and it seems to be working well.

[Peep]

it sounds like you need to re-run lilo (or whatever bootmanager you're using) after removing the drive? i know this was a problem in 9.1, so it was probably the case in 8.2 as well. from my experience in 9.2, this seems to have been fixed, so from now on you can keep doing exactly what you did and it should be fine.