I need help fast. here is what happened i installed slackware 10.2 on dev/hda1 it was installed on the primary master on the bus at ide0.this was a 80 gig maxtor that i placed an 8meg partition on that contained the mbr for my windows hardrive the was the secondary master on ide1.this was done so that lilo would have a means of booting my windows hardrive.i partition devh/da1 as follows

8meg windows
1gig root
1 gig swap
8gig usr
2gig opt
56gig home

i then formatted with the slow check for bad blocks and using the standard linux ext2fs filing system.I couldn't complete my install because my disk had bad images on it. i then rebooted to install another distro. only to find out my dev/hda1 hardrive was no longer recognized.upon the next reboot only the 8meg partition was recognized..
is my hardrive now gone forever is there a way to save it or must i now chunk any help appreciated..i hope this is enough info to help you guys help me...

you may need to use a boot CD and see if you can recover any data and maybe start again..?
If you use a linux boot cd it should come with tools to reformat/partition your drive again.. If there is anything on your disk you want to keep remmeber to back it up though as repartitioning or and creating a filesystem essentially gives you a 'blank' looking disk

acutally you might want to use a linux cd to boot and try recover your linux stuff and then boot with your windows xp cd. doing a repair may re-write the MBR on your disk and get you semi started again...

GParted, nuff said

It's a boot cd thats helped my out in the past. it should recognize the drive even if it's configuration is messed up and help you fix it.

Let us know

Hi,

You could try Ranish. Ranish is a good maintenance tool cd.

is this an opensoure? wheredo i download this

i attempted to use the gparted tool that came with my mepis live cd.no good

Check the version to see if it's old. I've seen popular distro line Ubuntu use old versions of GParted that don't hold a candel to the latest (0.2.5-3) I'm not sure other than that cause I've honesty never run across a problem like that.

Is there preious data that needs to be retrieved. I would suggest a slash and burn from scratch. You could also try the windows install disk. See if it recognises anything

Let us know

thanx for the advise. i am using the latest mepis live cd so i hope it has the latest gparted if not i will download it now...
but i dont everyone gets what i am say the system BIOS only recognizes this now as a 8meg hardrive..i would only be able to partition 8megs

Hi,

You could google for it or just use this link ranish

i've had this same problem as you. this is how my hd was ruined. first you're hd will show signs of read error then gently each time you read a data from the disk, also the part of the disk were your data resides gets destroyed too. it's something like an exposed air or damaged needle or i don't know.

i really suggest that you backup any data that you are still able to access asap. think about repairing your hd later.

thanx konsole box.there was realy nothing to backup as i was installing slackware at the time. and I am post for suggestions on how too fix problem.i personally think it has something to do with the slackware install..i will keep everyone posted who is interested..

ok for all still interested i simply turned my puter off unplugged everything and let it sit some days and the bios recognized it. as a precaution i simply went to the american megatrends website and flashed the upgrade. i installed several distro but settled on FC5 then switched to a relative unknown(video linux).everything is good now. thanx to those who helped