I started to install Redhat 9.0 on a new 40 gig maxtor IDE hard drive. Near the end of the installation, the third CD, the transfer to the hard drive took forever. but I let it continue. During the first boot, the system locked up several times.

I decided to fdisk the drive again and proceded to run fdisk and to delete all partitions. I restarted the computer atain to dos and ran fdisk/mbr to clean up te master boot record. once again I tried to install readhat 9.0. this time, when it came time to format the disk, it could not continue beacuse of physical errors on the drive.

Any suggestions? This is a fairly new drive and it seems to be wasted.

Thanks for any imput

Frank Higgins
higginsf@sbcglobal.net

Redhat, Linux or even Windows doesn't have a hard drive destroying utility. If the drive is actually bad, that is not the fault of Redhat.

Homey's right,... it's not Redhat's fault the drive's busted...

It was probably going to fail anyway. Maxtor drives are very delicate... they burn out very easily. I've had several fail on me under conditions that a Western Digital would have turned it's nose up at.

Quote:

Originally posted by JaseP Homey's right,... it's not Redhat's fault the drive's busted... It was probably going to fail anyway. Maxtor drives are very delicate... they burn out very easily. I've had several fail on me under conditions that a Western Digital would have turned it's nose up at.

Could you be specific? This makes me curious!

"Any suggestions? This is a fairly new drive and it seems to be wasted."

Maxtor, like other hard drive companies, has some spare blocks beyond the normal end of the hard drive. You can run Maxtor's low level formatting utility against the hard drive and it will check every block on the drive. Any that it finds bad it will assign to a spare block. As long as the number of bad blocks on the hard drive is less than the number of spare blocks then the hard drive will be as good as new after the low level format.

http://www.ameriwebs.net/groupworks/george/maxtor.htm

When you bought the hard drive you may have received a bootable floppy with the low level formatting program on it. If not, you can download it here:

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

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Steve Stites

Maxtor has a three year "no quibble" warranty. That means they'll replace it for free, no questions asked. I keep hoping one of mine will fail so I can get a new one, but unfortunately they're built like tanks... not like those wimpy Western Digital drives that break if you breath on them too hard. LOL

Maxtor has a no quibble warranty because they need it. Try putting those "tanks" against a power spike some time

By the way, low level formatting a drive that has started to go bad is a stop-gap measure. In most instances the half-life of that drive will be very short before whatever caused the malfunction in the first place spreads to the "good" sectors and/or cylinders...

Not really to sure of the relevence of c: when not using dos.... Anyway, I must say that it probably is a good idea to go ahead and low-level format it. I highly reccomend getting a Seagate for your next HDD. They run cooler than Western Digitals, and are usually the same price. Most of the other stuff has been said, so I'll leave you with suggestions.