I think I may have a bad HDD. I've tried installing Debian and FreeBSD on my server, but neither would fully boot after the installation was complete. The farthest both got was right before the kernel booted for the post install setup process. In fact, the last word on the screen was "boot". I believe the HDD has gone bad somehow. I tried loading up Knoppix, and of course that worked fine because it just runs off the CD and loads into memory.

It's not a big deal I can get another HDD, but I just wanted to know what anyone else thought before I purchase another one. Thanks.

Boot off of Knoppix and from the commandline run the following :

smartctl -a -d ata /dev/hda (For IDE)
smartctl -a -d scsi /dev/sda (For SCSI)
smartctl -a -d ata /dev/sda (For SATA)

It should tell you if SMART has logged any errors on the harddrive, which is a good way to tell if your harddrive is going bad.

If you have Serial ATA you may have issues. Not sure if Knoppix has the required kernel modifications to support SATA with the smartctl program but it's worth trying.

Oh sweet ok. I have IDE. I'll try this when I get home from work tonight. Thanks!

I tried the command and it reported no error logs.

So I then searched through my spindel of distro CDs to find one that woudl be quick to try and install, so I grabbed Ubuntu. It installed completely fine.

So since I really wanted 'pure' Debian installed on my server I attempted it again. For some reason it worked this time. I don't know what happened the other day but I'm not questioning it.