hdd trashed

lackluster · 02-25-2003, 06:10 PM

my hdd (Western Digital 20GB) is trashed. I need to restore this drive. I tried reading thorugh badblocks and mke2fs manpages to no avail. how can I start over?

MasterC · 02-25-2003, 06:34 PM

You mean, how to remove all partitions, and reformat the drive?

fdisk /dev/hdx
Then type m for options, choose the one to delete the partitions down to just 1 big partition.

Then, mke2fs -j /dev/hdx

to make the filesystem on the partition. If you want ReiserFS or something else, check the man page for the one you desire

Cool

lackluster · 02-25-2003, 06:59 PM

no .... that would be too easy

I mean my hdd is trashed, I can't even mount it or install over it. I don't care about the data on the disk and I want to be able to use this drive. I don't know what happened or how, it used to be my primary drive. I believe there is a problem with the superblocks....

lackluster · 02-25-2003, 07:14 PM

specifically the problem is :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
e2fsck 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
e2fsck: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/hdc1
Could this be a zero-length partition?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

finegan · 02-25-2003, 09:27 PM

fdisk /dev/hdc

If you can't even read the partition table, or more to the point can't write a new one, then the drive may well be toast. The error you received, was that "bad superblock", which is the block at the front of any given partition that is needed for mount to be able to mount the drive. Or, did you get "too many bad blocks", which means that the drive is no longer able to hardware compensate for all of the bad areas on it and is now... well, fried.

Cheers,

Finegan

lackluster · 02-25-2003, 09:56 PM

When I try to mount I just get the standard message. My last post is the result of e2fsck with any params. And up until this time that I checked fdisk was fine - er the way I had set it. But now it can't read the partition table.

# fdisk /dev/hdc

Unable to read /dev/hdc

What kind of funeral services are availible for ol' sparky? I was thinking a creamation might be in order ... but that's my answer to everything.

lackluster · 02-26-2003, 09:45 AM

I can read the partition table again! It dosen't really help much because I'm still getting the same errors ..... but it's at least not completely fscked (<-- pun intended).

MasterC · 02-26-2003, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lackluster
When I try to mount I just get the standard message. My last post is the result of e2fsck with any params. And up until this time that I checked fdisk was fine - er the way I had set it. But now it can't read the partition table.

# fdisk /dev/hdc

Unable to read /dev/hdc

What kind of funeral services are availible for ol' sparky? I was thinking a creamation might be in order ... but that's my answer to everything.

Be sure to video the services so everyone at LQ can virtually attend

Cool

finegan · 02-26-2003, 07:22 PM

Dude, if its a 20Gig, you may still be in warranty. When those drives were being churned out, the usual warranty was 3 years, you may just be within it. It doesn't even matter if you are second or third owner, don't need a receipt, just the serial number off of the top of the drive.

Cheers,

Finegan

lackluster · 02-26-2003, 07:56 PM

warranty, eh? that sound like the best idea I've heard in a few days. I'll give it a try ... I suppose I should contact Western Digital?

finegan · 02-27-2003, 12:40 AM

Yeah, I've never had to mail back a digi, but if they handle it at all like Maxtor, check for the serial number on the top of the drive and their should be a webpage at wd you can plug that into and find out if the warranty is live or not...

Cheers,

Finegan