Failing drive - remove?

[crowfan]

Hello,

I have a HP MediaSmart EX495 that I converted to Fedora 14/Amahi. It has 2 drives in it: the main drive with the OS and all files, and a second drive that I added with greyhole. I had it set up so that that files were duplicated from the first drive to the second.

The second drive is dead (clicking, etc.) and I can no longer access the hda. It's a headless server, and it's not booting to a useable state.

I pulled the OS drive connected it to my iMac via USB so I could get to my files. They are located in /gh which I thought was weird. Anyhow, I copied most of them off to the iMac so I have them. Now I'd like to get back to a bootable state.

I think I need to edit /etc/fstab and take out the second hard drive, so it stops looking for it on boot. I am thinking that's what's preventing it from booting all the way. Is that right? If so, how do I do that from the iMac? I can open fstab on the iMac but it won't let me change the contents.

I am still kind of a newb so be gentle. Thanks!

[sgtfoo]

I'm not familiar with the minor differences about terminal usage on Mac OS vs Linux, but you're likely not able to edit the fstab because permissions are stopping you.

try doing a sudo before editing the fstab, but just be sure you don't edit a fstab on the iMac by accident (if there is one).

If you load up a live USB of a linux distro, you could also use that to edit the /etc/fstab, but make sure the drive in question isn't broken anyways cuz that would be a futile recovery.
If the OS drive is the broken one, replace it.

[crowfan]

Thanks -- I was able to get it working again using a Live CD.