Got a problem with 2 drives and need some help

[CyberSlave]

I got 2 drives that I received from a friend to try and fix.

The first is a 160gig WD and the 2nd is a 80g Maxtor.
Both somehow are locked.

When you boot the computer up the drive is seen.
When you goto to install an OS or format it shows the entire disk size.
When you acctually proceed to try and use the disk it gives an error that there is no drive connected.

Now wouldn't a dead drive not be seen at all in bios and install screens?
Won't a drive with corrupted sections not show the full disk size but a reduced one?


I have tried these 2 drives on 2 differant computers trying and installs and formats using WinXP Pro, Mandrake 8, Red Hat 8 (or what ever the last home release was).

He said he was playing with Partition Magic and that was when the drives borked up. I have tried Partition Magic also.


I don't really want to toss them as dead seeing as how if I can get them working I can keep them and I am needing some space bad.

 

[Vertigo Acid]

If you can in linux, issue the following command
[size=-1]dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda bs=512
with /dev/hda being replaced by the appropriate drive
that will wipe the drive clean
proceed to cfdisk or dos fdisk or let windows partition it, whatever makes you happy
...
profit
[/size]

 

[CyberSlave]

I am very new to linux.

So I put the drive in and use custom partioning and enter that?

Or put it on a box with linux and run it from the console?

 

[Vertigo Acid]

Either drop the hard drive in a linux box and run that command *carefully*, making sure you substitute the correct drive for of=/dev/hda
or boot from a livecd like knoppix or some of the sort and do it from there
if that's too much trouble, boot from a dos floppy and fdisk it

 

[CyberSlave]

sweet.

Thanks will give it a shot.

 

[CyberSlave]

well, I tried and in Redhat using the terminal, this is what I get

dd: opening '/dev/hdd': permission denied

what can I do

 

[Lazn_Work]

Try delpart: http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

It might work when others don't.

==>Lazn

 

[CyberSlave]

ok, I got it and made a bootable CD since I don't have a floppy on my working box and the redhat one has no NIC.

I went and got DOS 6.22 and winISO and added delpart.exe to the disk.
It boots DOS just find but it will not find/show/ or execute delpart.exe

What am I doing wrong

 

[unhappy_mage]

You'll need to use a disk with CDrom drivers on it, and then change to that drive.

WRT linux: /dev/hdd would be secondary slave. Sure that's not a cdrom device?
/dev/hda: primary master
/dev/hdb: primary slave
/dev/hdc: secondary master
/dev/hdd: secondary slave
/dev/sda: sata 1
/dev/sdb: sata 2

and it's better to use "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/WHATEVER bs=512 count=1" so you don't randomly end up with something bad on your boot sector. That would be a problem.

 

[CyberSlave]

ok, so its not like windows with c and D then?

ok, I will try again tomorrow when I go home. thanks.

 

[unhappy_mage]

C and D in windows indicate partitions. /dev/hda refers to the entire disk. So what is C under windows and what's D under windows could very well be on the same disk, on seperate partitions. Look at the "disk management" thingy to show which disks are which. Write down the partition sizes, and then reboot into linux and compare the output of "fdisk -l" to that to figure out which disk is which.

 

[CyberSlave]

ok, I logged in as root and ran
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=1

and it says no such disk
I then ran
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdd bs=512 count=1

and it says
dd: writing '/dev/hdd': Input/Output error
1+0 records in
0+0 records out


Windows wont even see the drives, but Linux can, it just can't access them. And they still appear in the bios when booting and windows can see them during an install (w/ full size) but neither can access them


The hardware manager thing in Redhat shows the 160g drive as being /dev/hdd

fdisk /dev/hdd says
unable to read /dev/hdd

can I fix these or I am just boned? I am not going to give up since it can mean a free 160 or 80 gig drive. any other ideas?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Try changing users; you're probably a lower-permissioned user without permission to do whatever to the disks. Run "sudo su" in a terminal, and then you'll have administrator-like permission levels. That should fix the problem.

 

[CyberSlave]

ran sudo su in term, then entered everything as before and I sitll get the same i/o error

 

[unhappy_mage]

Does the prompt end in # or $ ? If it ends in #, you're properly superuser. If it's $, you're still a normal user.

If you're superuser, then it means the disk is well and truly dead. You might look at the output of "dmesg | grep hd"; this will show you things the kernel has said about hd*. And you might also look at the RMA system, if the disk isn't too old.

 

[CyberSlave]

ok, I will check it tonight when I get back home.

Thanks