error formatting drive: device is busy

thisguydave · 01-01-2012, 03:47 PM

Hello and thanks in advance for any help.

I am using Knoppix Live 6.7 (running off the dvd) to try to evaluate what has gone wrong with the boot drive of my Windows XP system. The drive will partially load windows and then crashes.

I can run Knoppix and can see the drive (sdb) however I am not able to manipulate it in any way. When I run disk utility, Smart Status says it has some bad sectors. When I run smart data it give me a warning on "current sector pending count, number of sectors waiting to be remapped". It will not run the self test (FAILED READ).

I tried to format the drive and got the error "the device is busy" with the details "One or more block devices are holding /dev/sdb"

If I try to open the drive in file manager I get the error

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with:
ntfs-3g-mount: mount failed: Device or resource busy

At this point I have nearly given up as I suspect the drive is finished, however I thought I would first ask if anyone can point out something I am doing wrong.

Thanks in advance for any replies.
David

fukawi1 · 01-01-2012, 05:54 PM

A thought, is it being automounted at boot?
What is the output of

Code:

# mount

thisguydave · 01-02-2012, 02:35 AM

Thanks for the reply. This is what I get from # mount

Code:

proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sr0 on /mnt-system type iso9660 (ro,relatime)
tmpfs on /ramdisk type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=2695168k)
/dev/cloop on /KNOPPIX type iso9660 (ro,relatime)
unionfs on /UNIONFS type aufs (rw,relatime,si=4d72f922,noplink)
unionfs on /usr type aufs (rw,relatime,si=4d72f922,noplink)
unionfs on /home type aufs (rw,relatime,si=4d72f922,noplink)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /UNIONFS/var/run type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=10240k)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=10240k)
tmpfs on /UNIONFS/var/lock type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=10240k)
tmpfs on /UNIONFS/var/log type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=102400k)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=2097152k)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=20480k)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=2097152k)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=1777)

By the way I forgot to mention it is a SATA drive and RAID.

David

business_kid · 01-02-2012, 07:11 AM

Guys do make windows rescue cds, and one of those saved me with vista.

Try a google for windows <your-version> rescue cd download