Drive errors

[Thorny]

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:39:59 +0100, Mark Fraser wrote:
> Also, I have done a backup of the majority of the drive, but if I was to
> copy everything to a new drive how do I make a bootable partition?
> 

It has never been necessary to mark a Linux partition "bootable", GRUB
doesn't care. In the past it was necessary for the Windows partition to be
marked bootable so the Windows/DOS MBR could hand-off and boot Windows.
Grub has a command, makeactive, which I believe is included just so GRUB
can hand-off to a non-supported OS like Windows. With Windows partitions(I
only have old ones, Vista might be different, I don't know), I have
always used makeactive in the stanza just before chainloader +1 for
Windows partitions. If you have GRUB installed to a partition it's
possible to chainload +1 to it but the makactive is not necessary, in fact
this is the way some people choose to use multiple GRUB menus on
multi-boot systems.

So any Linus partition is a bootable partition, if it has the correct
files in the correct location and the GRUB stanza points correctly to it.