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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] hd problem
  • Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 03:05:43 +0000 (UTC)


On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, David Moberg wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>

I am having problems even trying to boot linux, without cfdisk.

At first I got various error messages during boot about hda not
having an IRQ and hdb being non-IDE, kept rebooting, sometimes with
ignore=hda (which would not let me boot past the messages: hda:
status error
hda: drive not ready for command). One time I was able to type
cfdisk -z /dev/hda and was told the above again. Sometimes I also
got DriveReady DeviceFault SeekCOmplete DataRequest CorrectedError
Index, and somethinga about reset.

I didn't know that. This definitely looks like dying hardware. How well
does DOS (any version) handle the drive? Does the DOS fdisk even detect
the drive?

I had disabled the IDE controller, and then CMOS identified no drives. I reenabled the onboard controllers and CMOS still finds no hard drives so of course neither does DOS. Either both drives went bad, or something on the motherboard.

I can boot from a DOS floppy disk and use programs off it, just not access the hard drives or CD-ROM drive.


Perhaps the controller has gone bad? I could try a 40MB drive in
here as a test, or put these drives in another computer.

At that disk capacity I doubt a controller replacement is much better
than a whole HDD replacement.

I thought the IDE controllers on board may have gone bad since neither drive is detected and they were both having problems. Linux sort of found hda but not hdb at all. Or maybe CMOS went bad? If linux is still looking for hda when I disabled onboard controllers, I doubt I can replace the controllers with an I/O card (we have one that does large drives).
For a while linux was getting error messages about both hda and hdb.

I will try the drives in some other computer and hope I can fix the hda partition table with cfdisk -z.


Do I recycle this drive now? Or try a low-level format?

It's already low-level formatted, if dd didn't produce any error
messages. No need to recycle it just yet.

I take that back. :S

The drive may still be salveagable with cfdisk -z, in some other computer. A friend has been trying to give me his 400Mhz and this was only 300MHz.


Theoretical question:

Is there a way to just overwrite the partition table, which Running
Linux says is in the first 1024 bytes? They explain that
dd if=/dev/hda of=/tmp/stuff bs=1k count=1
saves the first 1024 bytes of data to a file.

Yeah, if=/dev/zero and of=/dev/hda should overwrite it if that is true.

This appears to have overwritten 1.2G, not just the 512bytes
containing MBR and partition table.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

erases the whole drive.
Did I need to do that in order to fix the partition table?
(It seems to be unfixable though).

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1k count=1

erases just the first 1k. bs=blocksize, count=number of blocks. Modify
to suit your needs.


Tody was not a complete waste of time - the scanner started to work with my newly compiled kernel after I turned it on and off a few times. At
first scanimage would find it once then never again until I powered it off and on again and rebooted.

So the kernel that I was trying to compile on the dying computer can handle scsi zip and scanner.

David
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