Hello All,
After months of singing praises of Linux, finally I got the customer to try it out. It was on an existing M$ system that had been running since its installation for 4 years. It had survived some power breaks in the past and was running smoothly.
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 couple of error messages that some files ( That looked like M$'s system restore files ) were reporting different block sizes and I chose the option ignore as I had already cleaned his last partition.
The installation went smoothly and I was able to boot into Linux as well as M$ 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 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 ......', it only showed a garbled 2 character text. After the next restart, it disappeared altogether and right now I am in a situation thats commonly known as 'la$@# lag gayey'.
Since I am promoting linux free of cost, as a community propaganda, providing a free HDD along with linux is a bit expensive and I would like to know some things as mentioned below.
1) Can this HDD be reprogrammed or forced with a low level format? Right now the bios cannot even detect it. 2) Is there any software that detects the health of a HDD before it can be loaded with Linux? 3) What could have gone wrong in this case and what precautions do I need to take to avoid such mishaps in future?
Regards,
Rony.
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On Sunday 19 March 2006 07:50 pm, Rony Bill wrote:
I am in a situation thats commonly known as 'la$@# lag gayey'.
ROTFLMAO ( Sorry for that but I've been working with C pointers for too long now ... )
- Can this HDD be reprogrammed or forced with a low level format?
Yep. Generally the harddisks come with a floppy disk or a CD which has such utils.
- Is there any software that detects the health of a HDD before it
can be loaded with Linux?
I think SMART was supposed to do this at the BIOS level but then I havent faced such a situation.
- What could have gone wrong in this case and what precautions do I
need to take to avoid such mishaps in future?
Some very weird bug must've caused this. I fear it might be the bootloader but then it's a shot it in the dark. Anyway, I always recommend people that they always use a separate harddisk when installing a new OS to be absolutely safe. This is after a very painful experience with FreeBSD about a year ago. If you don't have a separate harddisk then I would recommend only using a live CD or go for a rock solid distribution like Fedora, Debian, Slackware. Ubuntu has too many bleeding edge packages and is generally considered unstable.
Happy recovery! :)
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.
Satya wrote:
Use a Live CD to show off the features. Take backups before you change anything.
I had already done that on his pc as well as laptop. This was a proper installation for office use. Luckily I had already backed up most of his data to his new laptop and that is quite a relief.
Regards,
Rony.
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- Can this HDD be reprogrammed or forced with a low level format? Right
now the bios cannot even detect it. 2) Is there any software that detects the health of a HDD before it can be loaded with Linux? 3) What could have gone wrong in this case and what precautions do I need to take to avoid such mishaps in future?
Regards,
Rony.
Sorry to hear that :(
If you are getting garbage in BIOS while detecting harddisk, then I dont think its because of Linux. May be its coincidence that you install linux and hard disk got crash.
I think you should first clear CMOS, Attach that hard disk to some other machine and try to make low level format .
Try to install some other distribution on that hard disk ( while doing this dont bother if your BIOS doesnt detect your hard disk ).
Long back I had experianced such problem when my CMOS ate by CIH virus.
All The Best.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AbhiSawa
On Sunday 19 March 2006 7:50 pm, Rony Bill wrote:
Hello All,
After months of singing praises of Linux, finally I got the customer to try it out. It was on an existing M$ system that had been running since its installation for 4 years.
1) Never touch a Samsung disk (hardisk and cd/dvd drives) more than two yrs old. It fails after heavy activity in a few days. In case of cd/dvd even a year is bad enough. This has happened to me several times (six out of eight). so it's not coincidence. In fact never touch a customer hardisk without backing up EVERYTHING.
as 'la$@# lag gayey'.
LOL.
Since I am promoting linux free of cost, as a community propaganda, providing a free HDD along with linux is a bit expensive and I would like to know some things as mentioned below.
Be ready to breast feed the customer too, if he has used windoze for a few yrs.
- Can this HDD be reprogrammed or forced with a low level format?
Right now the bios cannot even detect it.
Move it to another machine with a different cable to check.
- Is there any software that detects the health of a HDD before it
can be loaded with Linux?
These usually die without warning. Software cant predict such deaths.
- What could have gone wrong in this case and what precautions do
I need to take to avoid such mishaps in future?
Read 1. Ask the customer to spend on a new hardisk or use knoppix.
On Monday 20 March 2006 05:55, JTD wrote:
- Never touch a Samsung disk (hardisk and cd/dvd drives) more than
two yrs old. It fails after heavy activity in a few days. In case of cd/dvd even a year is bad enough. This has happened to me several times (six out of eight). so it's not coincidence. In fact never touch a customer hardisk without backing up EVERYTHING.
Not true in my case. I have used Samsung for quite a while and I've found them to be as reliable as Seagate. May be you just got a bad lot?
On Monday 20 March 2006 7:54 pm, Dinesh Joshi wrote:
On Monday 20 March 2006 05:55, JTD wrote:
- Never touch a Samsung disk
Not true in my case. I have used Samsung for quite a while and I've found them to be as reliable as Seagate. May be you just got a bad lot?
Not over a 2 yr period and different models. Including ones which i never supplied. Of course this is two yrs ago. However Samsung cd/dvd drives are most definetly unreliable and will very often produce dma errors and fail to read cds which other drives read. A recent samsung hardisk produces dma errors while mounting some partitions during boot but works properly otherwise.
JTD wrote:
A recent samsung hardisk produces dma errors while mounting some partitions during boot but works properly otherwise.
I have had quite some cases in the past where the thinner 80 pin cable made the hard disk behave erratically. After changing to the older 40 pin cables, it worked stable.
Regards,
Rony.
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Dinesh Joshi wrote:
On Monday 20 March 2006 10:32, Rony Bill wrote:
I have had quite some cases in the past where the thinner 80 pin cable made the hard disk behave erratically. After changing to the older 40 pin cables, it worked stable.
Try SATA. Works perfectly :)
There was no SATA in those days. ;)
Regards,
Rony.
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On Monday 20 March 2006 10:03, JTD wrote:
Not over a 2 yr period and different models. Including ones which i never supplied. Of course this is two yrs ago. However Samsung cd/dvd drives are most definetly unreliable and will very often produce dma errors and fail to read cds which other drives read. A recent samsung hardisk produces dma errors while mounting some partitions during boot but works properly otherwise.
I have problems with my Samsung CDRW tray but no failure as of yet.
JTD wrote:
Be ready to breast feed the customer too, if he has used windoze for a few yrs.
LOL !
Regards,
Rony.
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Sometime on Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 07:50:27PM +0530, Rony Bill said:
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 ......', it only showed a garbled 2 character text. After the next restart, it disappeared altogether and right now I am in a situation thats commonly known as 'la$@# lag gayey'.
LOL Rony.. that's too much of coincidence. I do hope that your customer understands that its the harddisk that has passed away.
Anurag
On Monday 20 March 2006 06:31, Anurag wrote:
LOL Rony.. that's too much of coincidence. I do hope that your customer understands that its the harddisk that has passed away.
methinks some bug did it. had similar symptoms after installing FreeBSD. What was interesting is the fact that it destroyed not only the MBR on my Primary Master but corrupted the first few blocks of all other disks. Thankfully I had a knoppix disk handy which I used to back up my back up disks ;). Since then all the new experimental distros go into my virtual machines :) Courtesy Qemu :)
Sometime on Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 02:43:04PM +0000, Dinesh Joshi said:
methinks some bug did it. had similar symptoms after installing FreeBSD. What was interesting is the fact that it destroyed not only the MBR on my Primary Master but corrupted the first few blocks of all other
There goes your FreeBSD whining yet again. Call it conicidence, but i had no issues installing FreeBSD. It could be a bug in installer, probably with that particular version.
Anurag
On Monday 20 March 2006 12:00, Anurag wrote:
There goes your FreeBSD whining yet again. Call it conicidence, but i had no issues installing FreeBSD. It could be a bug in installer, probably with that particular version.
Yes I do realize that it must've been a bug. But alteast you acknowledged that there could be a chance that the installer had a bug. But most of the FreeBSD "enthusiasts" just go:
STFU n00b!!!11111111 FreeBSD 0wnZ Linux!!!!!!1111111 1337 1337 1337 1337 1337 1337 !!!!!!11111
lol :)
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Abhishek Sawant -
Anurag -
Dinesh A. Joshi -
Dinesh Joshi
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JTD -
Rony Bill -
Satya