Greetings!


I have the order to fix a Computer (Duron 800, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB hd, Win98). The problem is that it suddenly takes about 20 minutes to boot up during which the hard disk is active all the time. After Windows is loaded, the hd activity continues for a bit and the PC is unusable. After some more minutes it gets usable and acts completely normal.

I booted Linux on it and did some scans. But as these scans took forever, I did a hdparm -t /dev/hda and the result is: 2MB in 94.25 seconds = 21.73 kb/sec! Note that UDMA4 is enabled. When I disable it, it gets even slower.

At first I thought of a virus because fsck.vfat pointed out that the bootsector and its backup differ. But with the hdparm results I'm starting to suspect a hardware failure.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what might be the problem and what I can try to fix it? The system is from 2001 and has never had that kind of problem until it suddenly started a few days ago.


Thanks for any suggestions!

Ok, here is an update:

I have installed the HD in my own pc and it has the same problem here. Strange thing is that I cannot mount its filesystem (vfat) but I could do that under Knoppix while it was in the original pc. I will now try to download a diagnostic program from the Maxtor website.

Suggestions are still very welcome!

Since it happens in both computers I'd say it's the hard drive that broke down... Although they usually either work OK or don't work at all ?!?

Yes, nukkel, unfortunately you seem to be right. I downloaded the diagnostic tool Powermax from the Maxtor website and after a few test runs, it stated that the hard drive is failing. Luckily I managed to copy all the data though. Thanks for your time and sorry for this waste of bandwith.

No problem. Well at least you still got the data off of it...