I have an IBM a30 Thinkpad, 1000mhz processor, 384mb ram, and 4-5 different os to choose from. I just need to find a way to fix my failing hard drive.
I have a problem with my hard drive. It is a Hitachi 20gb 2.5 for a laptop. I had xp installed on it and one day, it just stopped working. I used to hibernate every night, but I didn't know you shouldn't do that. It went back to doing what it was doing before I installed Windows on it (operating system not found). I got my xp disk to try and fix it, but was unsuccessful. It would start the process, but when it was time to reboot to continue, it would start over and it would not boot. So I went back to Linux. But no Linux os would boot from the hard drive after install. I tried DSL, ubuntu, kubuntu, fedora, and mandriva. Mandriva was the only one to run without the live cd and it never ran past the second reboot.
Is the hard drive going out, or is it my computer going out, or could it be the mbr? Everything I install on it is still there when I move on to the next live cd, I just can't get it to boot the stuff on it afterwards. I can't afford to replace this hd, so I was hoping I can repair it. I've already destroyed all the information on it several times. I'm not concerned with what's on it. I just want to know if it will ever work. Any other info you need, just ask, I will respond.

Hi,

I would first backup everything if you have the means.

You could use the hdd manufacture diagnostics to check out the drive. Take a look at the LiveCD 'UBCD Ultimate Boot CD'. UBCD allows users to run floppy-based diagnostic tools from most CDROM drives on Intel-compatible machines, no operating system required. The cd includes many diagnostic utilities.

'SystemRescueCD' is another Diagnostic/forensic LiveCD. This Livecd is a Linux system on a bootable CD-ROM for repairing your system and recovering your data after a crash. It aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It contains a lot of system utilities (parted, partimage, fstools, ...) and basic tools (editors, midnight commander, network tools).

Both have tools that will aid you in hopefully recovering your system.

The above links and others are available from 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Hi

Silly question.
But you have specified the HDD as a bootable device in the BIOS ?

Regards

Chris

Hi,
Not really a silly question but a rather obvious one. Not everyone will look at things in the simplest form. I think by the OP you should see that OS had been installed and functioning. That a failure over time has occurred. One should always break things down into simple terms while trouble shooting. Then scale that list into micro terms to then test. You should be able to then reason the resultants to come to a final conclusion.

I do like to use the proper tools to trouble shoot. Not just shot gunning to repair something. When you shot gun then other problems will be introduced. Some times you need to do the opposite. Meaning remove hardware to the minimalist form that will still support an operation. Then start adding until the operation becomes unstable or the conditions change. Just remember that a good trouble shooter will know the conditions/environment under test. Once the variations or changes evolve then the person will know where to scope to expose the potential error/problem.

OK, here's where I'm at so far:

I have an xp disk, a dsl cd, a Mandriva cd, a Fedora cd, an Ubuntu cd, and all will boot from the cd drive, but the xp disk will only install and then revert back to set-up screen again after mandatory reboot. It will install the os and copy files before counting down for the 15 seconds. Then it reboots and starts over from the beginning. All the other cd's will boot up and run from the drive (as previously stated) and I can get online and everything, but when I install it to the hard drive, none of them were able to boot. I got the IBA was the intel boot agent that was the first option in network under bios by default so I moved them both down and moved hd up to under cd drive. Still, when it was time to reboot from the hd, no success.

Is there something I can do to get the hd to work again or is it dead? It's not the laptop because I can get to the bios. And I'm posting from it right now off a live cd distribution. I just can't see it being anything else.

Hi,

Boot a LiveCD then do a 'fdisk -l' from the cli and post the output.

Xp has many reboot issues. Worry last about that.

My guess: If your hard drive was going, it would be gone by now. If your chipset was going, the cdrom would not behave well. The Intel boot agent is something I know nothing about. I would use grub. Also check for silliness in the BIOS - all these power saving o0ptions can stop a laptop working. Are we on an old and dodgy battery?

384Mb of ram is tiny by today's standards, and you could be running out of memory. Have you a swap partition? I would use runlevel 3 Instead of 5 (initdefault number in /etc/inittab). That gets you a console. Then at least you can separate out X and memory problems. There is still links/lynx/elinks

Check the oputput also of fdisk -l. At least one person in the past has overpartitioned their disk, and after running off the end, it went onto the bottom and overwrote the boot record. So no installation would boot. It couldn't be that, could it? Post the output of fdiak -l

What is a cli? When I run fdisk in the DSL terminal, it says "cannot open device." I believe it is time for a new drive. It does not boot from the hd, and I can see all the partitions and files where it should be able to boot. It just won't. I thought it was my mbr so I went to the repair center after I restarted with xp. I entered the fixmbr command and nothing happened. So I went to the fixboot command. None of the others were close to my problem. I thought I had it, but it still said the same thingafter reboot: error loading os.
Still, what is a cli?

Hi,

'cli' is the 'command line interface'.

Hi,
I have an a21, had the same problem first
there is a small hidden partition on the disk for system restore that is called when you press the "thinkpad" button at post boot time.
you have to wipe it by running the disk setup manually and lose it completely. it is used to load a cdrom driver for the restore-cd

a cli, as has been said, is a console, a bash prompt

try sudo fdisk -l

I booted up the Fedora cd and went to the terminal to type fdisk -l, cfdisk -l, and sudo fdisk -l and all failed to do anything.

Fedora also told me my battery was about to go soon or has already gone. I pulled the battery and started the xp cd without it, and it was the first time the xp installation had made it to the Windows start screen after copying files and rebooting. Then it showed an error message I cannot remember and I did not write it down. It shut down and restarted again and went back to doing the same thing it was doing before, but it still copies the os to my hard drive. I know this because I have booted up with DSL to look at the partition table and I can see the NTFC system that was saved on it. I just can't boot into it. And I can't boot into anything else saved to the hard drive.I backed everything up 2 days before all this happened so I'm not concerned with losing anything. I've written so many times on this hd in the last week, there's definitely nothing left.

I have a separate question: I have a second hard drive on the left side of this computer that is read as a supplemental drive. It's an IBM travelstar 40gb 2.5 hdd that I used for storing downloads when xp used to be installed. Despite all that has happened, this drive is still readable after I install all Linux os cd's, but it is recognized as Windows files.It is totally unchanged and I'm not sure if it should be removed or relocated. Can I move that over to the right side and leave that left side empty? Then can I try and install on the second drive? I'm probably going to try that now, I guess. I just hope I don't mess up my computer more by switching the order of the hd drives. I'm running out of options.

Hi there,

In your BIOS the following options must be set;
in section BOOT
+Hard Drive
+Removable Devices
ATAPI CD-ROM Drive
Network Boot
Intel (R) Boot agent......etc

the plus sign indicates it will boot as default from these
devices in the resp. order, use F2 at post to boot from CD
F2 can only be used at cold boot not a restart!!! (stuppid IBM)

Tip:
don't use NTFS just FAT32, ntfs utils is to heavy for a PIII on resources
one of the best kernels for a thinkpad i have tested is:
2.6.22-16, Ubuntu - Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, later kernels give poor performance
and gutsy works out of the box on a think(bad)

This is an example of a thinkpad disk,
note-1: sdb1 is an usb-stick just as an example for the second-drive
note-2: sda1 has the bootflag on, this should also be set on your drive

$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5168 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xba48ba48

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1633 12345448+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 1634 5168 26724127+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 2095 3455 10289128+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 3456 5168 12950248+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 1634 2094 3478009+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 1006 MB, 1006632960 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 122 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 122 979933+ 6 FAT16

When you say you ran fdisk and 'nothing happened' I presume you got no output. You are preventing us finding oput what's wrong with your box. Now if you got an error, tell us the exact error. If it just sat there and did nothing, be explicit.

Ah, now I can tell you exactly what's going on.
Your battery is dead. So it's dragging down the power supplies, and that's your problem. I told that to someone after I was given his laptop to fix, and he went away and shoved the battery back in. The power supply did not survive, and he is buying a new laptop.

Keep that battery away from your laptop. Teetotally!

You only get flames here by rating your improvements by what windows does. Nobody cares what windows does - least of all the guys in Redmond, but including us, too. As for your extra drive on the left, run 'file' on the executables and it will; tell you exactly what's on the disk.

I entered fdisk and it did nothing. It literally did nothing. I went back to my xp disk and managed to get it past install screen. But it shuts down with blue screen after 7-10 minutes of being on. I only talk about the Windows stuff because it helps contribute to the problem that I am having with all the os that I have tried on this computer. It's not about whether or not you care about the Windows stuff, I believe everyone should know that I had the start of an xp os on my hd before I tried to install every single Linux distribution and got no success with anything. Everything would install, but nothing would boot after taking the live cd's out. I now have 512mb of RAM, and it tested as working, and so did my hd, for that matter. So I don't think that is the problem, but it has to be the computer and I'm not sure what it is. I know what's on the other disk. That used to be my storage drive for my xp before my laptop crashed. I could read all the stuff on it until I switched the position of the drives. When I did that, I could not see it anymore. I can't write an mbr on that disk so it cannot run by itself and the laptop cannot function without a usable hd or live cd.

Oh yeah, I stopped using the battery and I'm using the ac exclusively. But just so you know, it said I had 49% capacity in the battery so it may have been old like the systems also said and maybe not broken. I still had the problems without the battery so it definitely was not that causing my problem. I don't get errors with Linux, but it doesn't work after install. After xp install, I get several errors: bad pool header, wink32sys, 0x00000019, 0x80070080. I don't know what any of them mean.

I don't want to buy another hd if it's an internal problem. I'm not sure which direction to go now. If you do not like xp or you don't have anything helpful to me, please ignore this thread. If you believe you can help me, tell me what else you need to know