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> > I zeroed out the entire drive with a Seagate/Maxtor hard disk utility on
> > the Ultimate Boot CD, and repartitioned with BL3 fdisk and mke2fs and DOS
> > format.  sys'ed it.  It still acts the same as when I used PQMAGIC.
> > Won't boot (I can boot to floppy disk and cd to it) on two computers.
> > I think yesterday it was booting on the third computer (but D: and E: were
> > full of gibberish).
>
> These are sympthoms of bad zero tracks!

Bad physical partition table area?
After my third repartition and reformat, PQMagic 8 is complaining again 
about drive geometry so I gave up on repartitioning it again.  It works as 
a non-booting master, but if I make it a slave, linux cannot find any of 
the linux partitions. (DOS works).  So I will boot from floppy disk (or it 
could be secondary master - on this computer I cannot boot from anything 
except primary master so I can't boot from primary slave and use this as 
non-booting master).

> > Linux won't mount the two logical DOS partitions that fdisk made.  If I
> > copy files to those partitions via DOS laplink pro, they turn into
> > gibberish.  The programs in C: work so I will enlarge C: and put all my
> > DOS programs in it.
>
> > Linux works fine once I boot to it from DOS.  LILO stops at LI
> > when booting from lilo on floppy disk.  I doubt it would work from MBR.
>
> > The solution is to boot from DOS floppy disk to DOS, and then with loadlin
> > to linux.  I can't use this drive in the ECS computer where loadlin stops
> > the linux keyboard from working.  Is there some other way to boot from DOS
> > to linux?

> ECS manufactures  the same Pc Chips motherboards, with other names.
> Many Pc Chips MBs are known for conflicting with Linux somehow.

SiS motherboard.  An identical ECS board works with the keyboard but not 
with a scanner (it used to work) and the USB went bad.  So I think 
something broke on this board and it is not a built-in conflict.

> > Any idea why linux behaves so much better than DOS in logical partitions?
> > Sindi
>
> At this point I can affirm that your HDs surely have bad "zero tracks",
> which are not fully damaged but won't boot.
> However they can be useful for a second drive (for data storage).

zero tracks are where it boots from and keeps partition tables?

I might try it as secondary master with a primary master.  Experiments 
show that mixing two speeds of drive do not slow down the faster one, but 
sharing a cable with CD-ROM drive might.  I will test that.

> DOS is extremely zero-track dependable because it keeps the system files
> strictly there, while Linux doesn't.

dependent or dependable?  Do you think lilo would boot from this hard 
disk?  From floppy disk it stops as LI.

> > > > Fdisk. cfdisk, qparted, etc. are unable to handle this kind of viruses.
> ... ... ...
> > > > (edited for short)
>
> > I used the Maxtor utility.  I think the partition table area is worn out.
>
> That's why I say your HD have bad zero tracks.

We agree then.  Better than a mysterious virus.  People give us lots of 
worn out hard disks.

> > > To erase (overwrite with zeros) the MBR I can also
> > > dd if=/dev/zero  of=/dev/hda  bs=512  count=1
> > > Would this be just as good?  Can I then repartition and reformat?
> > > Should I overwrite more than this in case the virus is hiding some place
> > > else?
>
> I do believe this will work fine and makes the same debug does (and its more
> concise).

Easier to remember.

> The focus is the master boot record.
> Sparse bad sectors on other tracks don't affect the booting.

I think the Maxtor utility that wrote zeros also stopped using any bad 
sectors.  It may have been the same as low-level format.

> > I found a site warning against using FDISK/MBR, which can cause more
> > problems than it cures.
>
> FDISK/MBR is a poor solution, and has to be done from a floppy known as
> "free of viruses".
> If you aren't very sure of this, really don't use it.
> This option just replaces the HD's MBR with  the floppy disk's one.

Zeroing destroys the MBR and you replace it by partitioning?

> > Would spinrite be adequate to determine if the drive is simply worn out?
>
> I'm not sure. I've never used it.

Maxtor diagnostic test found no problems.

> >
> Since zero-track is much more sensitive to failures, I think HD
> manufacturers should provide some kind of adjustment so that track zero
> could be "pulled" to another location, but unhappily this doesn't happen.
> Naturally this would change the geography of the HD.

We were talking about that.  Maybe you could flash the BIOS to change the 
location of MBR?  This way they sell more drives.

Should I expect anything else on this drive to fail?  In the past few 
months I lost several drives which I why I am using this one.  One of them 
left scorch marks that we had to clean off the controller pins.

Sindi

> > >
> Teixeira
>
>
>
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
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