Problem with Linux hard drive

[BobSheridan]

I am a very low level user and am not particularly "au fait" with the technical side of Linux. After a period of non-use i have gone back to trying to use a hard drive with Linux installed on it - i was using it to learn about Linux.

As far as I can remember - it's been a coupl e of months - it was working fine. Today it booted up once and offered very limited functionality. After a reboot i noticed two error's coming up. One says "DriveReady SeekComplete Error" and the other "UncorrectableError". These apply to only two sectors on the hard drive.

A part of me says that this is the end of this drive and I shouldn't spend anymore time working on it. However, another part of me doesn't want to lose what work I had on it, and I would like to at least try and restore it. (Also the experience of dealing with a problem like this in Linux is part of the reason why i started this project anyway!)

Could anybody make any useful suggestions. I am using Redhat Linux and boot from a floppy disk. Apologies for missing information, if there's anything that will help with your analysis just ask and I will endeavour to find the information for you.

Thanks for any help provided.

 

[weevilofdoom]

what type of partitions do you have?

if they are e2/e3 (ext2,ext3), you can bootup to a command prompt in single user mode, and use e2fsck with a couple of options to fix, or ignore these bad sectors (they will be relocated to lost+found directory), and then you can go on your merry way.

other types of partitions, I'm not sure how to fix this problem, but, I don't see why you'd have anything other than those, being a low level user, with not much experience. e2fsck should help you out quite a bit.

The weevil of doooooooooom
-The eagle may soar, but the weasel never gets sucked up by a jet engine (Anonymous)

 

[BobSheridan]

Thanks for the advice Weevil, i found information on how to boot up in single user mode on the Red Hat website, but I'm still getting the same errors.

If i type "linux single root=/dev/hdb1 initrd=" at the boot: prompt - suggested on their website - i get the following error;

hdb : dma_intr : status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb : dma_intr : error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=65, high=0, low=65, sector=2
end_request : I/O error, dev 03:41(hbd), sector 2
EXT2-fs : unable to read superblock
Kernel Panic : UFS : Unable to mount root fs on 03:41

I don't even get to a point where i can have any influence or perform any maintenance over my install. I might just try reinstalling on a brand new hard drive and just attempt to recover what i can from the old one from the new install by copying the files from the old hard drive to the new one.

That's unless there's any more bright ideas to be shared.

 

[weevilofdoom]

HuH!! well, before you go and get rid of that drive, have you formatted the drive, perhaps there is just some data corruption error, maybe a low-level format will work for you, who knows. But you should explore all possibilities before you go and get rid of something re-fdisk, re-format, and see if it still happens for you. Otherwise, yeah I'd say the drive has gone the way of the ghost...

Good luck to you!

The weevil of doooooooooom
-The eagle may soar, but the weasel never gets sucked up by a jet engine (Anonymous)