On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 07:50:27PM +0530, Rony Bill wrote:
In order to avoid touching his data, I loaded Kubuntu 5.10 on the fourth partition of the hdd. During installation in progress it did show a
Shirley ubuntu has a live cd you can use?
The installation went smoothly and I was able to boot into Linux as well as M$ a couple of times and even backed up the last drop of his data after that. Then I went on to demonstrate the bootup screen and how
Error: Backups should have been done before the install.
to choose between the system and the system was booted into linux. It got stuck at kernel panic. After a forced reset, the bios gave an error for the hdd. Instead of the entire text of the hdd label like 'Samsung
Sounds like the hard drive chose a bad time to die. Coincidence, or the hard drive exercises while installing stressed it just a bit too much.
- Can this HDD be reprogrammed or forced with a low level format? Right
now the bios cannot even detect it.
Worth trying.
- Is there any software that detects the health of a HDD before it can
be loaded with Linux?
In Windows? Not a clue. In Linux, try the SMART tools but I suspect they're either inaccurate or the results are open to interpretation.
- What could have gone wrong in this case and what precautions do I
a) coincidence b) stress
need to take to avoid such mishaps in future?
Use a Live CD to show off the features. Take backups before you change anything.