Multiple Hard Drives

[anexian]

I have two drives in my linux box using removable drive trays, one for the os and one for the data. The data drive is a backup drive so I want to keep it out of my system during normal use. However when I take it out and reboot I get an error message saying that /backup can not be found, and the system wont boot.

Is there a way to keep the drives in the file system separate so I can move the drive around freely. (like in windows)

Also, can I make an icon on the desktop for each drive like in MacOS....?

Thank you for any input.

[camelrider]

I've no experience with removable hard-drives and probably won't have a solution, but..
If we could see your /etc/fstab file and any other information about how the filesystems were installed on the drives someone could probably help.
If the system won't boot without the second drive I'd guess that some system files must have been installed there.

[scott_R]

Generally speaking, the error you're seeing is probably just a simple problem. More than likely a # in the offending line of whatever text file will fix it. It's hard to divine what that is from your question.

There's no good reason why your system won't boot. It should just error out that it couldn't find the drive, and continue to boot. That makes me suspect that you're bootloader is on one drive, but perhaps your actual kernel is on the removable drive?

Not a good answer, I know, but perhaps it's something similar to this.

[mdwatts]

You probably need to change auto to noauto in the /etc/fstab entry for the removable drive that mounts to /backup.

[tourquflite]

is there a line in your /etc/fstab file about say

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/backup <filesytem> auto


if the auto is there then set it to noauto.... that may have someting to do with it......

if you change it the worst youll have to do is to mount the drive like:

mount /mnt/backup
or
mount -t <filesystem> /dev/hdb1 /mnt/backup
or
mount -a


hope that helps.....