Re: [SLUG] Hard Drive

From: SOTL (sotl155360@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Oct 08 2004 - 23:14:03 EDT


Hi All

Lets be clear about the sequence of events here.

1. First, I entered a web site which may or [may not] have caused a HD
issue. I suspect yes because of the response of the drive and because I
have had this happen in the past. How I do not have a clue; that is way
above my level.

2. My normal method of solving these type of issues is to reinstall the
system which is Mandrake 9.1. Problem I have no idea where the system disk
but I did find the 9.2 disk which system I do not like. The 9.1 disk is DVD
while the 9.2 is CD. There are major differences between the DVD and CD
version; the DVD having all the programs in the CD version plus a number of
ones including like Midnight Commander which I like. Since I plan on
upgrading to 10.1 ASAP I decided I would sacrifice the additional programs
in 9.1 and update to 9.2.

3. At this point I can still boot Windows. Being some what whipped out I
did what I should never do and started trying to repair a computer. I thus
proceed to put the install / update first disk of 9.2 in the old CD drive.

4. My update process ended half way through the process with an error
message of unable to find something; if I recall correctly the HD but it
could have been something else. I tried this a number of times. The HD made
a horrible scratching sound here in Linux but not in Windows. I can still
boot windows at this point.

5. The next day or maybe the following day, most probably the following
day, I tried again. This is when I lost the ability to boot into either
Windows or Linux so the boot record is now corrupt. For me loosing boot is
normal too when I have problems with reinstallation. This is where I
stopped two days ago.

My next idea was to reinstall Windows which should allow me to boot widows
if I did not destroy the Windows separation partitions.

As for partitions the drive is partitioned as follows:
hda1 10GB Windows Sorry I forgot the petition type but it is Windows XP
standard
hda2 20GB Data Fat32
hda3 100 MB /boot ext3
hda4 10GB / ext3
hda5 10GB /home ext3

Personally I do not see an issue with what I am proposing but considering
ny last two week hard luck I chickened out and posted my posting.

As far as the hard luck lets let that suffice with the above computer
issues and the fact that I broke mt hand. Typing with two fingers on one
hand is a bitch. I will also state for what ever reason my Linux desktop
system is down too for some reason related to modem. That one I don't get
as I have a system on one of my drawer HD that has not been used in a
couple of years. Implication being this is a hardware problem which will
have to wait until I have two hands to work with.

Question: Does anyone have any better idea of how to verify if the HD is
bad or good with out using the recovery disk. I did not get a tools or
diagnostic disk.

Thank

Frank

Levi Bard wrote:

> I recently had a drive go bad - applications started giving me read
> errors, then the bios started complaining, then it just became
> generally unusable. Interesting that you mention different partitions
> having an effect, though. I had some ext3 and some xfs partitions on
> this drive, and it seemed like the xfs really exaggerated (or do I
> want to say exacerbated) the problem while the ext3 hid/worked around
> it as much as possible. Later I ended up wiping and reformatting the
> xfs part to ext3 and, while the problem didn't go away, it became a
> lot more usable until my replacement arrived.
>
> So I guess I'm still an ext3 fan.
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