unbootable hard disk

[Igor Gueths]

Assuming you have any data on the hd, can you mount any filesystems once
successfully booted from floppies? Bc if not, you may want to check to
make sure that the connection from the hd to the power supply is firmly in
place, and that there are no loose wires. Does the drive in fact spin up
when you power the machine up?

May you code in the power of the source,
may the kernel, libraries, and utilities be with you,
throughout all distributions until the end of the epoch.

On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:

> Hi gang,
>
> What else should I look for? I have a brand new machine with a 40
> GB Fujitsu HD and I am installing a Slackware 8.1 distro with
> speakup and an external doubletalk. The installation was made
> from a set of diskettes and went without a hitch. The root
> partition was large because I need a lot of space for /tmp and
> perhaps /var in addition to the usual miscellaneous stuff. It is
> about 4 GB and is the first partition. I marked it active with
> fdisk just in case, but installed lilo to the MBR anyway. The
> software and the general configuration is similar to my own
> system. I made a couple of boot disks during the installation
> process, and it is fortunate that I did, because the system will
> not boot from the HD. It boots fine from the floppies I made, but
> not from the HD.
>
> I checked the bios setup program (a royal pain in the ass) and
> saw that the HD was detected as the primary master, and that it
> was selected as the second priority boot device, right behind the
> floppy. I checked and double checked the installation (in fact I
> did it more than once) being certain to install the kernel from
> the installation boot floppy, but nothing. No error messages, no
> nothing. It acts as though the HD were simply not present,. and
> yet the bios recognizes it, it is on the list of devices to boot
> from, and it works fine when booting from a floppy.
>
> Well maybe not entirely fine. One more symptom.  When I boot up
> from a floppy and pay attention to how it is working, the HD is
> extremely sluggish. Checking the data transfer rate with hdparm
> -t, I get about 10% the rate I get on my own system. Also, the
> hdparm command is unable to set the DMA option with the -d1
> option. What happens is that the hdparm command causes a 60
> second delay after which the system resumes functioning but
> without the DMA setting changed.
>
> I am dealing with some idiots at a computer store who are
> convinced the problem is with Linux, and I am equally stubborn in
> insisting that it is not.
>
> Any notion of what I might be overlooking? This is incredibly
> frustrating. I gave the folks at the store permission to wipe out
> my root partition if they needed to, hoping they would put a DOS
> or Windows OS on it to check it out, but they happen to have a
> Redhat 6.0 disk lying around and are spinning their wheels trying
> to replace Slackware 8.1 with Redhat 6.0 because they suspect
> there is a hangup when Linux tries to use a raid personality.
>
> Thanks for any ideas.
>
> Chuck
>
>
> --
> The Moon is Full
> So visit me sometime at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh
>
>
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