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How can I tell Ubuntu to ignore my dead hard drive during booting?

I know my secondary hard drive is bad, but I cannot take it out. Every Reboot takes forever because Ubuntu tries to read from it for a long time and reports errors:

[  228.984480] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: 
               Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
[  228.984486] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 65
[  228.985395] Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 8
[  228.985463] Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 9
...

I commented it out in /etc/fstab, but that doesn't help. Any ideas? Thanks!

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
1

Disable it in the BIOS?

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Looks like there may be a way to tell udev to ignore it, though I don't have access to a system right now on which to test this.

As root, open up /etc/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-storage.rules with your favorite text editor.

A few lines down, you'll probably see a line that looks like this:

# skip rules for inappropriate block devices
KERNEL=="ram*|loop*|fd*|nbd*|gnbd*|dm-*|md*", GOTO="persistent_storage_end"

Add "sdb*" to that second line, so it looks like this:

KERNEL=="ram*|loop*|fd*|nbd*|gnbd*|dm-*|md*|sdb*", GOTO="persistent_storage_end"

Save the file and then reboot.

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    While this may work - if you can Disable the dead drive in the bios I'd take that route. I'd be hesitant to suggest changes to the OS that could cause you other pain.
    – Dave Holland
    Feb 12, 2010 at 2:52
  • Agreed. Though I was operating under the (perhaps incorrect) assumption that if he couldn't remove the hard drive, perhaps he didn't have physical access to it. Depending on whether or not some sort of lights-out management is available, he may or may not be able to get into the system BIOS.
    – EEAA
    Feb 12, 2010 at 3:00
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Why can't it be taken out? I would unplug either the power or interface cable if it's just an issue of being too difficult to pull the entire drive out.

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  • The OP said "it cannot be taken out". As such your answer is, well, not an appropriate answer.
    – EEAA
    Feb 12, 2010 at 2:48
  • Well if "it cannot be taken out" because it's too difficult to take the drive out of the case (which I've seen before), the easy solution is to just unplug a cable, leaving the drive in place and having the OS ignore it at the same time.
    – Paul Kroon
    Feb 12, 2010 at 3:05
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    Unless, as I commented earlier, he doesn't have physical access to the server. If the OP is savvy enough to remove the dead device out of /etc/fstab, I assume he would be savvy enough to unplug the drive if that were a valid option for him.
    – EEAA
    Feb 12, 2010 at 3:07

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